Next GOP challenge: absentee prison votes

[MDM4AU 336]

10/30/2004

Next GOP challenge: absentee prison votes 

By TIMOTHY LOGUE tlogue@delcotimes.com After waging a successful campaign to extend the deadline for accepting overseas military ballots, Republicans turned their attention to the prison vote Friday, vowing to challenge the legitimacy of all absentee ballots received from any Pennsylvania correctional facility.

"We have every reason to believe that there has been gross abuse of the absentee ballot process in the prison system," said U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-7, of Thornbury.

While waiting to begin a press conference outside Philadelphia’s Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility Friday afternoon, Weldon said he watched the crime he was prepared to speak about unfold before his eyes.

"Four girls walked out from the prison who had clearly been doing some kind of election work," he said. "When (state Rep.) Steve Barrar and I went up and asked them what they were doing, they said ‘We can’t tell you.’

"We told them who we were and asked if they had collected any absentee ballots while they were in the prison. Sure enough, one of them pulled out a ballot and showed it to us. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen -- just the type of illegal, third-party handling of ballots that we had been tipped off about. And there were TV crews there filming the whole thing."

Weldon said former U.S. Attorney Robert E.J. Curran would be filing a suit in federal court challenging the legitimacy of all absentee ballots that originated from Pennsylvania prisons.

Barrar received a call from a prison source earlier this week who told him canvassers were entering Curran-Fromhold and helping prisoners with their ballots. "I can’t believe that people are allowed to just come and go from the prison with absentee ballots in their hands," said Barrar, R-160, of Upper Chichester. "There was absolutely no oversight."

Weldon and Barrar claimed the girls coming out of the prison were in no mood to chat. "The one girl tried to conceal the ballot by putting it under her jacket as we approached them," Barrar said. "After a few questions they ran away. Clearly, there was some criminal intention on their part ..If the prison tries to say this is an isolated case, it’s bull. There has to be an investigation."

A spokesman for the prison system, reached after the press conference, did not offer a comment on the incident.

State law prohibits incarcerated, convicted felons from submitting an absentee ballot. Pretrial detainees and misdemeanants are eligible to vote by absentee ballot.

According to Weldon, 20 prisoners at the Delaware County prison registered to vote, and just two mailed in their absentee ballots.

http://delcotimes.com/site/printerFriendly...newsid=13256886

[Tigermike 3,057]

"We have every reason to believe that there has been gross abuse of the absentee ballot process in the prison system,"

That sounds like a legitimate concern to me. But I am not a democrat, so I fail to see how that could disenfranchise anyone.

[CCTAU 3,350]

The only way that the dems would see this as disenfranchising is if the ballots were votes for Bush!