Buried in the mountain of political articles during this year’s election was one particularly macabre story about an unknown person in Columbia, S.C., who had submitted at least 51 new applications to register dead voters from multiple states as Broward County Democrats. Flagged relatively quickly by Broward Elections Supervisor Pete Antonacci, the fraudster’s efforts were not much more successful than those of Pavel Chichikov, who bought dead serfs in a “get rich quick” scheme fictionalized in Gogol’s 1842 Russian classic, “Dead Souls.” Since truth does tend to be inevitable, we’re left scratching our heads as to what they were going for.
Originally posted for the Orlando Sentinel’s Central Florida 100.