While campaigning, it wasn't unusual for Sen. Jack Harper of Surprise to knock on doors and learn that voters whose support he seeks have already died.

Other candidates probably have had the same experience.

Now the Republic lawmaker from Surprise has proposed legislation for the secretary of state to establish a mechanism for candidates and political committees to notify the office about registered voters who might already be deceased.   

"We have too many dead people on the voting rolls," Harper said in an interview with the Arizona Capitol Times. He said he had encountered the situation often while campaigning in Sun City West.

"Knocking on doors on quite a few homes… I'd say I understand that those people living in the house there were registered Republicans, and I would find out that one of them was deceased," he said. "And the last thing people think of when their spouse dies is to take them off of the voting rolls."

The idea is to give candidates and political committees the ability to electronically report people they believe are deceased voters during the process of filing their campaign finance reports through the Secretary of State's website.

Under Harper's proposal, the secretary of state will forward the information to the appropriate county recorder, whose office will then attempt to verify the information. If the voter is indeed deceased, the county recorder will cancel the voter's registration.

The legislation, S1109, is co-sponsored by eight additional Republican senators.