Kinston voter fraud allegation untrue

An accusation of voter fraud involving the residents of a state home for the developmentally disabled in Kinston making the rounds on right-leaning e-mail listservs in North Carolina is completely untrue, say state mental health officials, the local elections director and Lenoir County Republicans.

"Bus loads of mentally retarded and severely handicapped patients from a state funded facility called The Caswell Center were being transported to the voting location and that their black Democratic state employee aids were voting for them," said the e-mail, signed by Lester Jarman, a Kinston insurance agent. "They claimed they were assisting; but, how can institutionalized mentally retarded patients know how to vote much less make a reasonable logical decision? Most of them cannot read or write and many of them are also blind. This must be illegal!"

The e-mail also alleged that "Democratic supporters" were passing out shots of liquor to voters in the parking lot of the early voting site, Michael Biesecker reports.

Neither accusation is true, according to Lenoir County Board of Elections Director Dana King.

B.J. Murphy, the vice-chair of the Lenoir County Republican Party, has sent out an e-mail attempting to dispel the rumors about the Caswell Center. Jarman has also sent out an e-mail backing off his original accusations.

Neither of those messages appears to have had as wide a distribution as the original, however.

More after the jump.

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In an interview with the Kinston Free Press, King said the rumor appears to have originated with an incident at a polling site when five residents of the Howell Group Home, a private residential facility for the developmentally disabled, were taken to vote.

"The caregiver went to the machine with the first resident and started voting for that person," King told the newspaper. "The resident didn't ask for help or tell the caregiver how she wanted to vote; the caregiver just started voting."

A poll worker saw an employee attempting to assist one of the residents and asked her to stop. No ballot was cast.

According to state law, people assisting someone in filling out a ballot must be relatives or legal guardians of the voter. People with developmental disabilities have the same right to vote under the U.S. Constitution as any other citizen.

Brad Deen, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Services, said only four of the more than 400 residents at the Caswell Center are registered to vote. Those admitted to the state-run home must be profoundly disabled. Deen said the Caswell Center had made arrangements with the Lenoir County Board of Elections for the four residents to vote curbside, with assistance from poll workers, not center employees.