Florida elections and law enforcement officials detected a scheme that sought to register dozens of dead people to vote in Broward County, though the motive is not clear, according to the county elections office.

The county received about 50 voter registration applications sent in envelopes postmarked from Columbia, South Carolina, with no return address, documents show.

The majority of the people named in the applications — who were listed as Democrats — were verified to be deceased and no votes were cast under their names, said Broward County elections spokesman Steven Vancore.

Vancore said that Florida allows people to register to vote by mail but he said the county receives state data about people who have died and marks those individuals in its files as ineligible to vote. Florida requires a valid government ID to actually show up and vote, so Vancore said this scheme “only got half the equation” necessary to vote.

“Somebody went to great pains to exploit the system and it was caught,” said Vancore. “We don’t know if this person did this for pure chicanery or they were trying to alter the outcome of the election … but there appears to be no attempt that this person voted.”

The South Florida Sun Sentinel was first to report the applications.