Frequently Asked Questions

Question: What are the steps to search and Challenge Ghost Voters at an address?

Answer: 1.) Select your State and County from the map. 2.) Type your address in the search bar to return a list of voter names associated with your address, then highlight the ghost names who don’t belong and push the Challenge button 3.) Fill out your contact information to populate the Challenge letter 4.) Generate the Challenge Letter PDF, print out, notarize and mail or deliver in person to your Clerk. That’s it!

Question: Is GhostFinder attached to any official database for updates?

Answer: No. Like many voter roll research organizations, GhostFinder uses a legally obtained extract of official State voter databases. It does not have any connectivity to the official rolls and should be used for informational purposes only. It uses the same process as any voter canvass activity, only GhostFinder is non-partisan, as you the resident are doing it to help your Country, City or Town Clerk be aware of names associated with your address who don’t belong there.

Question: How could votes from inactive Ghost Voters still on the voter rolls be potentially injected into the election results?

Answer: Theoretically, there are multiple methods a nefarious actor or organization can use to inject Ghost ballots into the election system, including printed fake ballots suddenly manifesting in counting centers, late night ballot drop boxes, arriving in mail-in ballot envelopes, etc., which can then be correlated to changes in electronic machine counting tallies according to algorithms that calculate just enough votes required to swing the count. An example of a possible injection of Ghost Voter ballots pointed out by researchers can be clearly seen as a vertical line in the 2022 Midterm Georgia Election for Senate shown in the charts below. And sometimes during the election cycle, the live television feeds may not able to synchronize these changes fast enough to remain undetected as also shown (source FrankSpeach.com). Researchers have also postulated these spikes could be introduced throughout the evening in smaller increments as an attempt to hide the large spike at the end.

But it all starts in the State voter rolls from undetected, inactive voter name(s) associated with an address – the Ghost Voter. So if you submit a Challenge to help your Clerk disassociate or remove the ghost names associated from your address, you can help remove the risk of these last minute voter swings occurring and help close the door to potential voter fraud being done using your home address.

Question: Can my local Clerk eliminate names from the official State database?

Answer: In Wisconsin, the County Clerk can only mark voters Active or Inactive in the WEC online system. The WEC has to be asked to remove a name association with an address (they almost never remove names). And unfortunately, anyone with County Clerk credentials can easily mark voters Active or Inactive in ANY county or municipality, not just their own. This leaves the system open to cyberattack and potential voter fraud by nefarious actors.

Question: I don’t see the name of someone in my residence in the search list, but I know they are of legal voting age and live here.

Answer: It is possible they are not in the database extract or they might not be registered to vote. In Wisconsin, go to MyVote Wisconsin to check the latest election database information to see if they are registered to vote. You will need first and last name and date of birth. If they are not registered, follow the instructions to register online or register in person at your county, city or town hall.

Question: When I type my full address using the first generation GhostFinder.Net site, I get a message “results not found” or there are people missing from the results.

Answer: The GhostFinder.Net was an early prototype development site the Team had established which used a simple, limited boolean search format, much like the old Garmin GPS car units, so it only returned exactly what you ask it. Shortening the search query in these older formats would help return more hits. For example, type “1234 Park” instead of 1234 Park Lane, Oshkosh, WI 54902”. The new database queries in this site now display hits as you type so as to zero in on your target address in real time. The early GhostFinder.Net is but one of what will hopefully be many independent derivatives. For information on how you can develop a version of GhostFinder for your own State or Country, see the Contact page.

Question: The information in the search results does not appear up to date with the MyVote web page. Is GhostFinder an official State database?

Answer: Again, the GhostFinder database is an extraction of the official WEC state voting database that was extracted on the date listed in the search engine header, so it might not be completely up to date. The WEC charges a lot of money for each data request and the data is constantly being updated, so go to MyVote Wisconsin for the latest information. But you can still leverage Ghost Finder as an informational search and challenge tool to ask your Clerk to remove any ghost names that are associated with your residence.

Question: I see Active, Inactive and Merged voters at my residence. Should I only challenge the Active ones or all of them?

Answer: Any name associated with your address can potentially be misused as a Ghost Voter, so you should select and challenge any name you don’t recognize as living at your address. Only active eligible voters currently living in your household should be affiliated with your address. Your Clerk will do an investigation to determine how best to mark them in the voter rolls.

Question: Can I do searches and submit Challenges using addresses other than my own?

Answer: Yes depending on your State’s laws. In Wisconsin any registered voter with personal knowledge can challenge any other registered voter on the list. The Clerk would then need to send a postcard to that person asking them to respond and verify they live there. If they don’t then the Challenge is processed.

Question: I typed the address of a vacant lot in my neighborhood and it came up with several names. Can I challenge these?

Answer: Absolutely! These are clearly ghost voters that need to be removed.