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West Virginian Democrats vote AGAINST Obama - by casting votes for prison convict
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
May 9th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
May 9th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
In a stunning demonstration of the national dislike for U.S. President Barack Obama, West Virginia, voters went to the polls to cast their votes for a prison convict. Fifty-three-year-old Keith Judd, the prisoner in question, won four out of the 10 votes in that state's Democratic presidential primary.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Serving 17 years at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution, Judd was sentenced in 1999 for making threats against the University of New Mexico. He's due to be released in June of next year.With 93 percent of precincts reporting, Obama received less than 60 percent of the vote to Judd's 40 percent.
For some West Virginia Democrats, simply running against Obama is enough to get Judd, or Inmate Number 11593-051, votes.
"I voted against Obama," Ronnie Brown, a 43-year-old electrician who called himself a conservative Democrat said.
"I don't like him. He didn't carry the state before and I'm not going to let him carry it again.'
When asked which presidential candidate he voted for, Brown said: 'That guy out of Texas."
Judd was able to get on the state ballot by paying a $2,500 fee and filing a form known as a notarized certification of announcement, Jake Glance, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's office said.
According to newspaper journalists, Judd circulated his political standpoints to local media. These include opposing national health care reform on the grounds that it violates the 10th Amendment. Judd also cites the U.S. Constitution, saying that incarcerated felons should not be disqualified from voting.
Judd is housed at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Texarkana, a low-security facility for male prisoners, located in northeast Texas near the Arkansas border, 175 miles east of Dallas.
Attracting at least 15 percent of the vote would normally qualify a candidate for a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
But state Democratic Party Executive Director Derek Scarbro said no one has filed to be a delegate for Judd.
Judd has also apparently failed to file paperwork required of presidential candidates, but officials continued to research the matter, Scarbro says. There may also be issues because the man is an inmate in federal prison.
Voters in other conservative states showed their displeasure with Obama in Democratic primaries last March.
In Oklahoma, anti-abortion protestor Randall Terry got 18 percent of the primary vote. A lawyer from Tennessee, John Wolfe, pulled nearly 18,000 votes in the Louisiana primary.
In Alabama, 18 percent of Democratic voters chose "uncommitted" in the primary rather than vote for Obama.
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