There’s an easy explanation for low voter turnout in some areas of the country — more than 3.3 million voters on registration rolls are, in fact, dead.

And another 12.9 million voters remain on registration rolls in an area where they no longer live, according to an analysis by Aristotle International Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based company that provides voting data to political consultants and others.

That means that about 9 percent of all registered voters are “deadwood” voters — the term for voters no longer able to vote in a precinct.

The state with the highest percentage of deadwood voters is Massachusetts, where 116,483 registered voters are dead — 3.38 percent of the state’s total — and 538,567 no longer live in the area where they are registered to vote.

“Deadwood on voter rolls complicates the electoral process and can cause problems like fraud,” said Phillips, and it “always creates a perception of low voter turnout.”