Pittsburgh County Settles Lawsuit Over Dead, Duplicate Voter Registrants

Allegheny County, home to the city of Pittsburgh and its surrounding suburbs, settled a lawsuit over the numerous instances of dead voters and duplicate registrants on its voter rolls.

The county entered into a settlement on Monday with the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group, after its manager of elections and three members of its board of elections were sued. The election watchdog found that the county's voter rolls contained nearly 1,600 dead registrants, close to 7,500 with erroneous information, and more than 1,500 aged 100 or above (including 49 born in the 1800s). The suit accused the officials of failing to reasonably maintain the rolls.

As part of the settlement, the county has agreed to turn over records related to the dead registrants, send letters to registrants with incorrect dates of birth on file, inspect registrations of individuals aged 110 years or older to determine whether death notices were overlooked, and to accept "list maintenance leads" from the watchdog over the course of the next year.

The voter roll cleanup comes six months ahead of the 2020 elections in a region that will play a pivotal role in determining which presidential contender will take Pennsylvania. President Donald Trump won the state by fewer than 45,000 votes in 2016.

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