The West Virginia letter bearer pleaded guilty to electoral fraud after admitting that he changed political affiliation from Democrats to Republicans who had requested absentee ballots for the state’s main election, according to a report.
Thomas Cooper, 47, of Dry Fork pleaded Thursday guilty of an alleged attempted election fraud and an alleged injury to a letter, BuzzFeed News reports.
He faces an eight-year prison sentence, although prosecutors have agreed as part of a defense agreement to call for a lower sentence.
Officers in Pendleton County, where Cooper works in three cities, found that eight absentee requests through the general election appeared to have been changed using black pens, according to news outlets.
Five requests have been changed so that the voting choice is shifted from Democrats to Republicans, but the official knows that some voters are not Republicans.
When he called them, they said that they had used a blue pen to request a Democratic ballot. For the other three, the affiliation has not changed, but the request has been changed, according to BuzzFeed.
“[I did it] as a joke, “Cooper told investigators about the” joke “post, according to the complaint.”[I] don’t even know them. “
His lawyer Scott Curnutte said his client was involved in “silly birds.”
“He is very sorry for the implications for our democratic process,” Curnutte told BuzzFeed. “But it must be remembered, that the letter he changed was a request for the ballot, not the ballot itself.”
Around 2,236 votes were cast in Pendleton County for the June primary elections, including 943 GOP ballots and 1,209 Democratic votes, according to data from the secretary of state.
