Dead people have a history, much of it apocryphal, of mucking up elections. There is the story of an Ohio man dead for two decades who voted in the 2004 election, and the tale of a woman from Guam who donated thousands, from the grave, to the Tea Party.
But in the Bronx, it is a dead man who was presented as a candidate for state Senate in 2010 who has perplexed local officials.
The man, Raphael M. Klapper, an ophthalmologist and an immigrant from Poland, died in May at age 85 of complications from pancreatic cancer. Six months later, he was listed on the ballot as the Conservative Party candidate in the 31st District.
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Klapper, who lived in Riverdale, never expressed an interest in running for office, family members say. But by the time polls closed, he had collected 828 votes, or about 2 per cent of the total without knocking on any doors or delivering a single speech. Adriano G. Espaillat, a Democrat, won the seat with nearly 40,000 votes. “The whole thing is bizarre,” said Klapper's son Jeffrey, who, it should be said, ran twice for office. “We're not exactly sure what happened.”
Election officials, similarly baffled, have asked the Manhattan district attorney to investigate.
Though the rolls of the deceased have long been a trove for schemers searching for votes, nobody seems to know why anyone would want to put up a dead man for election. But in the weeks after Klapper's death, Conservative Party officials gathered 38 signatures, enough to nominate him for the Senate seat.
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In a district representing northern Manhattan and a small part of the Bronx, where conservative voters are about as rare as tumbleweeds, the nomination did not stand out.
The paperwork sailed through, and the Board of Elections sent Klapper a notice in July confirming his candidacy. His widow, Erika, consumed with other things, did not pay close attention to the mail. Nobody seemed to notice when Klapper failed to show up at a candidates' forum in late October at the Riverdale YM-YWHA.
William Newmark, chairman of the Conservative Party in the Bronx, described the episode as a “real fluke.” He said Klapper's name had been suggested by a party member, whom he declined to identify. He said that he did not know Klapper had died until he got a call from a Board of Elections official about two months before Election Day, and that he assumed the board would remove Klapper's name from the ballot. “When the guy died, I was totally shocked,” Mr. Newmark said. “Why in the world would I put the person on the ballot? How does it benefit me? It's ludicrous.”
Mr. Newmark said he had met Klapper once, at a fundraiser in 2008, and had no reason to check in with him before the party began gathering signatures in June. Officials at the Board of Elections said the party should have more closely monitored the gathering of signatures and immediately reported Klapper's death. The board never received his death certificate, said a spokeswoman, Valerie Vazquez.
When Klapper's relatives saw his name on the ballot, they were irate. Later, they discovered a stack of letters at Erika Klapper's home threatening penalties for his failure to make the necessary financial disclosures. Erika Klapper contacted the chairman of the Conservative Party of New York State, Michael R. Long, who notified the Manhattan district attorney.
“There is no reason in the world you would put a person on a petition without their knowledge,” Mr. Long said. “I thought somebody was playing a game with the party, or in fact involved in some kind of identity theft.”
The district attorney's office would not say whether it was investigating. Mr. Long said investigators from the office had asked him if anyone had been paid to gather signatures, and that he told them no. Election law experts said any investigation would focus on whether anyone who had been involved in the effort knew that Klapper was dead and what he or she had intended to accomplish.
“If nobody knew he was dead, they just made a mistake,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, an election lawyer. “But,” he added, “it's hard to believe that no one knew he was dead.” Klapper was one of five people on the ballot for the Senate seat, which was previously held by Eric T. Schneiderman, now the state attorney general. Espaillat, who ultimately won the seat, said he could now claim the “dubious honour of being the only state Senator who beat a deceased opponent.”
“All I can do is extend my condolences to Klapper's family and urge the Board of Elections to stop putting dead people on the ballot,” Espaillat said.
Klapper was a physician for more than 50 years, with an office on the Upper West Side. He came to the United States in 1952 to escape the post-war chaos of Poland, and fell in love with medicine after reading the Sinclair Lewis novel Arrowsmith , which centres on the travails of a Midwestern doctor.
Klapper's politics had a conservative bent, his family said, but he was not a natural fit for the Conservative Party; members from the Bronx had persuaded him to join. Though he enjoyed bantering about taxes with friends, he never signalled any interest in pursuing public office, family members said. His son Jeffrey, however, was a Conservative Party candidate for the state Assembly in 2008. The younger Klapper, who works for a nursing home, got about 400 more votes than were cast two years later for his dead father. — New York Times News Service