John Dollar of Butler Township was upset when he received a voter registration application for his wife, who has been dead for four years. Election officials, however, assure voters that precautions are in place to ensure those voting are eligible.

Third-party mailings offering voter registration and mail-in ballot applications are causing confusion in the county, especially among those who receive the applications for a deceased spouse or even a dog.

John Dollar of Butler Township was upset when he received a voter registration application for his wife, who has been dead for four years.

Dollar wondered if something nefarious was afoot, especially with the current national tension between Republicans and Democrats regarding mail-in ballots.

“Why she'd be getting this, being gone for four years now, I don't know,” Dollar said.

The address where the application in the mailing would be sent is the post office box for the county Bureau of Elections, and a toll-free phone number answers via voice mail at the state Department of State.

The mailing received by Dollar was sent by the Republican National Committee.

Wanda Murren, director of communications at the Department of State, said Monday that a handful of organizations, including both the Democratic and Republican committees, send the mass mailings out each year.

“They are very well-intentioned, and the goal is to increase voter participation and that is a very worthy goal,” Murren said. “We really do appreciate any effort to get out the vote for every eligible voter.”

She said the reason voters are getting registration and mail-in ballot applications for dead spouses is that the organizations that send the mass mailings use databases that have not been updated to remove deceased voters.

“We do not have control over the mailing lists these organizations are using and that's how that happens,” Murren said.

Aaron Sheasley, the Butler County Elections Bureau director, stressed that the mailings received by voters are applications, not ballots.

Sheasley said he has received calls from “a lot of very upset people” who have received the third-party mailings.

“People's first reaction is, 'I got a ballot in my dog or my deceased spouse's name,'” he said. “They did not get a ballot. They got an application for a ballot.”

This is an excerpt from a larger article that appears in Wednesday's Butler Eagle. Subscribe online or in print to read the full article.