“East Texas official arrested for alleged mail-in voter fraud involving 2018 Democratic primary for local seat”

Texas Tribune:

An East Texas county commissioner was arrested Thursday on charges that he and three associates committed voter fraud in a 2018 primary election.

A grand jury indicted Shannon Brown, a Democratic Gregg County commissioner whose office is in Kilgore, Marlena Jackson, Charlie Burns and DeWayne Ward, on numerous felony charges in a scheme that allegedly involved falsely claiming voters were disabled in order to obtain absentee ballots.

County election results show Brown won a narrow victory in the March Democratic primary — 1,047 votes to his opponent’s 1,042 — with a much greater share of his support coming from absentee ballots. The indictments involve the ballots or applications for ballots of about 38 voters, and most counts accuse Brown and the others of “intentionally [causing] false information to be provided on an application for ballot by mail,” with an application indicating that “the voter was disabled, when in fact the voter was not disabled.”

An investigation into the election was announced in May 2018. The Gregg County grand jury issued indictments for 134 total counts against the four, with multiple overlapping charges involving the roughly three dozen voters. The indictments themselves offer little explanation of how the alleged fraud occurred, and do not indicate how many of the 38 successfully cast ballots.

Share this: