Voting dead: A mishap at the polls
When Sgt. Bill Schissler went to vote on Tuesday morning, he encountered an unusual problem at the polls.
He was dead.
At least, that’s what the voter rolls showed.
The very lively and very much alive 32-year-old Greenwood resident did a 12-month tour of duty in Iraq and safely came home on Dec. 13, 2005. But when he arrived at Greenwood Christian Church on Averitt Road to vote early Tuesday morning, his name, William J. Schissler, did not appear on the voter rolls above the name of his wife, Yvette L. Schissler.
“The poll workers asked me how long ago I’d registered to vote and I said it was about three years ago. So they asked me to step aside and they started making some phone calls. After 15 or 20 minutes, a lady came back and said, ‘I’m sorry sir, but our records show you as deceased.’”
“I said, ‘Really, I’m the liveliest dead guy you met, and last time I checked, I made it back from Iraq.”
“Then, as soon as they verified my information and that I was alive, they gave me the card and I could vote.”
Schissler, an active duty guardsman who works in an office at Ft. Benjamin Harrison, got to work about an hour and a half later than usual. Though the national guard gives soldiers time on election day to vote, Schissler was still in touch with his boss via BlackBerry while the two were both in election day lines. “My boss already knew I’d be late to work for being dead,” he said with a chuckle.
Poll workers never gave him an explanation for his death. “They didn’t verify how or why I was dead. I think whoever entered it made a mistake. But I still need to reach my wife and find out where my life insurance money is.”
Still, the incident provoked laughs from people in front of and behind him in line, he said, a bit of levity on an otherwise serious day.
