Hey! Anyone can make an honest mistake. After all, sometimes it's hard to tell if some people are dead or alive. If they're buried in Chicago cemeteries, it is especially difficult.

So let's cut the social security people a break, right?

Approximately $18 million worth of stimulus funds went to Americans who are dead, according to report released by the Social Security Administration's inspector general released Thursday.

More than 89,000 payments worth $250 each, taken from the $787 billion stimulus package, were doled out to either dead people or prison inmates. Seventeen thousand incarcerated Americans received an aggregate $4.3 million from the economic relief package.According to the report, the prisoners received the government money because they had been eligible for Social Security benefits before being sent to jail.

Overall, the stimulus - which has become a hot-button political issue heading into the November midterms - has paid out $250 checks to about 52 million Americans who qualify for Social Security benefits.

The report said that 55,000 of the payments made to the deceased resulted from clerical errors and a failure of states to swiftly inform the administration of their deaths. It found that 41,000 of the faulty payments were returned.

You see? It's all just a big misunderstanding. Sort of like all those dead people on voter rolls in states run by Democrats. You're never too young, too old, or too dead to vote Democratic.