Who did Dianne Hastie vote for in the 2020 presidential election?
Well, it’s unlikely she did. But someone did in her name.
Hastie, a resident of Bellingham, Massachusetts, died on August 1, 2020, at 70 years old after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
And yet, that same Dianne Hastie voted in the November 2020 presidential election, Bellingham town clerk Larry Sposato confirmed.
The town clerk wasn’t thrilled to hear that it happened, as he told NewBostonPost in an email message.
“That is the same person,” Sposato wrote in an email message on Thursday. “I now see that she had died in August of 2020, before the election. We do our best to catch all the deceased and moved in a timely manner, but last year, with all the extra work thrust upon us, obviously some were missed! It is maddening that someone voted on behalf of a decedent.”
It’s unclear who cast the ballot in Hastie’s name.
NewBostonPost also investigated several other alleged instances of people voting under the names of dead people in the state, but town clerks explained that records showing voters under these names were due to data entry errors. In most cases, the clerks said that no ballot came in under the name of the person in question. In others, the person voted early and died before the election — and the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office declared before the 2020 general election that such votes would count.
Incorrect data entry made state records show that six more people voted in Foxborough than actually did. The same was true of seven people in Salisbury, four people in Easthampton, 12 people in Methuen, and one person in Wilmington, for instance.
“As a result of your request, we were able to discover this anomaly,” Foxborough town clerk Bob Cutler told NewBostonPost in an email message. “All of those names have now been removed from the list of those who have voted. I will reiterate that they did not vote in the November 3rd election.”
This information of dead people in the 2020 general election voting records was brought to the attention of NewBostonPost by Republican state committeeman Richard Baker of West Newbury.
Baker was among a group of activists who researched to see how many people died before early voting began in the 2020 presidential election in Massachusetts who appeared to have voted based on state records.
He said that communities need to be more careful moving forward to prevent both voter fraud and inaccurate voting records.
“The Secretary of the Commonwealth and the Town Clerks must do more to maintain accurate voter rolls to prevent illegal voting,” Baker told NewBostonPost by email. “Requiring voter identification would prevent voting under a different name.”
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