Don May received political mailers and a jury summons addressed to his dog. He said he believes his late son, who was a poll worker, might have registered the dog to vote, perhaps as a protest against the lax voting system.
By Max Taves / Special to the Times
Melissa Aurora May was a large, white, furry dog that died almost four years ago. And until last Friday, she was also a registered Republican voter.
The dog’s owner, Don May, began to suspect that something was strange in the fall of 2002. That was when political mail and a jury summons addressed to the Great Pyrenees flowed into his mailbox. May sent back mail that he received and wrote that such a person did not exist. But May’s efforts to find his missing son, Daniel, distracted him from filing a formal complaint to the California secretary of state, the department responsible for monitoring elections and policing voter fraud.
May, a retired computer scientist, spent a year and a half searching for his 27-year-old son, who went missing after leaving a friend’s house in Long Beach in June of 2002. He interviewed his son’s friends. He combed streets and restaurants where Daniel used to spend time. And he searched the Internet every day for hours looking for signs of his son.
For his son to disappear for weeks at a time was not unusual. Daniel frequently spent weeks incognito in the Santa Monica Mountains. After 10 days of hiking, fasting and meditating, he would usually reappear at his father’s house on Las Flores Canyon Road. In September 2001, Daniel returned home from camping on the beach five days after the terrorist attacks with no knowledge of them.
After graduating from UCLA in 1997, idealism and wanderlust drove Daniel May from one job to another. He taught elementary school in Compton for a year. He traveled with bands as a roadie. He started a Web site that recorded people’s good deeds. And he worked as a poll worker in Malibu.
Don May formally filed a complaint last week with the secretary of state, and he suspects his son registered the family dog to vote.
“It had the ring of something that he would do,” May said, “The only reason that he would have done it was to prove that it could have been done.”
Daniel, his father said, was a vocal critic of the voting system’s lax requirements and corruptibility. Until recently, state law did not require identification to register to vote. Applicants only needed to be 18 years old or older, a citizen not on parole and sign under penalty of perjury. Now state law requires that applicants provide a state-issued driver’s license, a Social Security number or present identification upon voting.
But Don May worries that the new requirements won’t keep existing illegal voters from casting their ballots. “To me, the crucial point of the story should be that this case illustrates that there may be millions of illegal votes cast nationwide … I am making this public because I believe that my late son Daniel May would have wanted me to,” May said.
May filed a formal complaint with the secretary of state in early June and a formal investigation began last week. According to the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters, Melissa Aurora May’s ability to vote was suspended last Friday until the investigation is complete. There is no record of Melissa May ever having voted in an election.
A spokesperson for the secretary of state did not return calls from The Malibu Times.
Paul Rutledge, the investigator of the case for the secretary of state, also did not return several calls from theTimes.
May’s search for his son ended in April 2004 with the identification of a skull in the Santa Monica Mountains. A group of hikers found a skull on Backbone Trail near Las Flores Canyon Road. No body was found. An investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department brought little relief to May and his family.
Although officially declared a homicide, no individual was found responsible for the crime. The family suspects that Daniel was injured and eaten by a mountain lion. Dr. Armaiti May, Daniel’s sister and a veterinarian, researched his death and found that it had characteristics consistent with mountain lion attacks.