What happens if you vote, then die? Missouri lawmaker says your ballot should count.

Every election, former Carroll County Clerk Peggy McGaugh said, there were “one or two” absentee ballots her office had to throw out.

It wasn’t because the voter had committed fraud or done anything wrong. They had simply died — sometime in the six weeks between casting their ballot and Election Day.

Missouri law specifies that elections officials must reject absentee ballots if they find out the voter has since died. But McGaugh, a Carrollton Republican and Missouri state representative, said it’s not evenly applied.

In smaller counties, several county clerks told the House Elections and Elected Officials Committee on Wednesday, officials scour the local newspapers’ obituary pages, funeral notices and state health records to identify those who passed after voting.

But votes like that can be missed, if there is no obituary, or in populous areas with more people to track.

“The larger jurisdictions, it’s just not feasible,” said Livingston County Clerk Sherry Parks. “I wouldn’t have any idea how they could search their public records.”

The revelation that ballots of recently deceased voters have likely been counted surprised lawmakers, who fixated on the issue during a hearing on several proposed changes. The committee is expected to vote out a package of the proposals this week.

“We keep going back to this dead people thing,” committee chair Dan Shaul, an Imperial Republican, said, asking Johnson County Clerk Diane Thompson, “How do you verify all of them?”

“We can’t,” Thompson said. “We just can’t. If you have a person that goes to live with a family member out of state … We may never know they passed away.”

McGaugh wants to let all the ballots of voters who have died count so they’re treated the same way statewide.

“They were alive when they voted,” she said. cautioning colleagues not to interpret the situation as “dead people voting,” a 2020 conspiracy theory widely debunked.

McGaugh also wants to permanently institute absentee voting for residents without requiring a reason, but with restrictions. Voters would need to show a photo ID, and they could only vote in person at an elections office for three weeks prior to an election. A regular absentee ballot, which requires an excuse, would need to be signed and notarized if the voter wants to mail it in.

Her proposal also includes a measure that would end Missouri’s presidential primary election, which Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has called for as a way of saving $9 million every four years.

Ashcroft has said presidential primaries are not necessary when state parties already hold caucuses to pick delegates for their national conventions. Some Democratic lawmakers raised concerns that primary elections allow more voters to participate in the process.

Many lawmakers have filed bills to make expanded absentee voting permanent with fewer restrictions, but those bills have stalled.

Last month, House Republicans passed a bill that restores the state’s voting photo ID requirements, part of which was thrown out as unconstitutional by the Missouri Supreme Court last year.

House Republicans also are pushing a bill to require all ballots be hand-marked on paper, in response to conspiracy theories that new voting machines caused fraudulent votes in the 2020 presidential election.

“Missouri citizens want to ensure we don’t have the problems they witnessed in other states,” said sponsor Justin Hill, a Lake St. Louis Republican. “Some things just shouldn’t utilize technology.”