Nov. 4 is long gone. The election -- at least at the presidential level -- was a blowout. It's over, it's done, stick a fork in it.

So, does it really matter if the voter rolls are all up to date?

Consider this: A story The Dallas Morning News posted this afternoon, reporting that an election official in Richardson, in Dallas County, says 15 early-voters in his district fraudulently listed incorrect addresses on their voter registrations.

Voter rolls are something Texas Watchdog has written a good bit about since we launched back in August. We've done reviews of the voter rolls in Harris and Dallas counties, comparing them to databases of federal death records, looking to see whether there were people on the rolls who were deceased.

Now, 15 votes in one county, particularly in a major American city like Dallas, is not a lot of votes. And Morning News reporter Ian McCann points out that that number would not have changed the outcome of any races either way. But he also makes a point we've made before here on our blog before:

... The issue sheds light on what could be a broader problem if questionable registrations exist in other precincts. In Texas House District 105, for instance, fewer than two dozen votes separate Republican incumbent Linda Harper-Brown from Democratic challenger Bob Romano.

That's the House District 105 race in Irving that we blogged about just this afternoon, the one that will decide whether Republicans retain control of the legislature's lower chamber or must share it with Democrats in a 75-75 split. That race, and the direction of the entire state House, has come down to 20 votes.

In our October review of the Dallas County voter rolls, we found 48 voters who, databases suggested, had ballots cast in their names after death. Dallas County officials told us last week they ascribe nearly all of those cases on clerical errors, not postmortem voters.

The response from the election officials in the DMN story posted this afternoon:

Bruce Sherbet, the county's election administrator, said department officials are taking steps to verify the addresses in Mr. Morgan's complaint. But they aren't able to examine voter rolls on a large scale or immediately purge questionable registrants.

Mr. Sherbet added that it is up to the district attorney to decide whether to prosecute the voters for a crime and if so what charges to pursue.

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(Picture by flickr user HJL, used via the Creative Commons license.)