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Thirty-one states allow some form of early voting.

Ballots cast by the dead are usually the focus of fraud allegations, as happened in Washington's extremely tight 2004 gubernatorial race, decided by a margin of 129 votes out of 3 million cast. More than a dozen ballots were linked to dead people.

But some advocates say legitimate, mail-in votes from people who die before Election Day should be counted, particularly in rural elections, where races can hang on a handful of votes.

"In Montana, there have been several legislative seats decided by one, two, three votes," said Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures, an organization that recently looked at 12 mostly Western states and found that half have no rules governing ballots of the deceased.

Those remaining states -- Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota and Utah -- demand that such ballots be rejected, leaving Montana and Oregon as the only states that count them.

South Dakota Secretary of State Chris Nelson said he doesn't understand why a dead person's vote should be counted.

"In my mind, it's clear," Nelson said. "You have to be a qualified voter on Election Day. I don't know how someone can say you're a qualified voter if you're deceased."

Pam Smith, director of the advocacy group Verified Voting, disagrees: "By definition, the day you cast a ballot is Election Day. That's it."

Mail-in ballots arrived in record numbers during this year's protracted primary season.

In California's San Diego County, for example, 45 percent of the presidential vote arrived by mail. Similar numbers surfaced across the country. Election experts have predicted that as many as 25 percent of voters will vote by mail in November.

Dan Seligson, an editor at electionline.org, a voter watchdog organization, said ballots from the recently deceased could affect the contentious presidential showdown between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.

"It could be a great contribution to any legal challenge," he said. "That's what happened in 2000, when we had this perfect storm of questions about ballot counts, ballot designs, and dead voters."

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