LI families shocked by letters claiming deceased relatives have registered to vote in upcoming elections

Long Island politicians are calling on state election officials to investigate how a dozen families from Nassau and Suffolk received letters from two state senators thanking their deceased relatives for registering them to vote in the upcoming election.

The thank-you letters were sent from the offices of Republican Senators Jack Martins and Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick, who represent different parts of Nassau County. Relatives received the letters during the last week of August.

“I get mail for my mom, so it's no surprise to me to get letters for her,” Port Washington resident Erin Molyneux told the Post. “But I was surprised when I saw that the letter was from our state senator congratulating her on registering and thought, 'This isn't right.'”

To make matters even more confusing, Molyneux called the state election board and learned that his mother's name was not on the voter roll.

Molyneux said his mother, Sang Harrison, lived in Georgia most of her life and never had an actual New York address. Harrison, who was terminally ill, was in New York only for the last 10 days of her life in January 2023.

“My real concern was whether she was a victim of identity theft. I don't want her name and reputation to be associated with voter fraud,” Molyneux said. “I don't want my mother's name to be associated with the story that she voted from the grave or that someone voted in her name.”

In letters to the state inspector general and the election commission, Democratic minority leader in the Nassau County Assembly, Delia DeRiggi-Whitton (Port Washington), said the congratulatory letters had “caused great distress to the families of the deceased.”

Even more troubling is the fact that many of the deceased individuals mentioned in the letters had never registered to vote in New York State, raising serious questions about the source of the data used by these senators, she continued.

“It appears that government resources were diverted to compile these flawed mailing lists, especially so close to an important presidential election.”

She concluded in her letters that Martins and Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick may have violated “several provisions
the laws and ethical standards of the State of New York.”

Martins could not be reached for comment Saturday, but said during a news conference Friday that he had received the list of new voters from the state Board of Elections.

However, the Board of Elections responded that it could not have obtained Harrison's name from him because there was no person with that name in the statewide voter database.

Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick was also unavailable for comment on Saturday.