Below The Beltway

Dateline Missouri, where the dead not only vote, they win elections:

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Voters in the small northeastern Missouri town of Winfield re-elected their mayor for a fourth term on Tuesday, about a month after his death.

Ballots had already been printed and absentee voting had already begun when Harry Stonebraker died of a heart attack at age 69 on March 11. He won easily in Tuesday’s general election with 206 votes, or 90 percent. Alderman Bernie Panther got the other 23 votes.

The election recalled Missouri’s 2000 U.S. Senate race, when Democrat Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash just weeks before the November election, but still defeated incumbent Republican John Ashcroft. Carnahan’s wife, Jean, was eventually appointed to the Senate seat until a special election in 2002, when she was defeated by Republican Jim Talent.

Lincoln County Clerk Elaine Luck said she wasn’t surprised by Stonebraker’s win, noting was a popular mayor who helped lead the community of 1,500 through the devastating 2008 flood, when a levee breach caused by a burrowing muskrat damaged about 100 homes.

“I figured he’d win because he seemed to get even more popular after he died, just like Carnahan,” Luck said.

The advantage of voting for a dead candidate, of course, is that you can rest assured that they won’t do any harm.