ELKINS — A mail carrier was convicted in connection with the manipulation of absentee voter requests and will now serve probation and home confinement.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey applauded the conviction of Thomas Cooper, 48, of Dry Fork. Cooper will serve five years probation and six months of that under home confinement. He pleaded guilty in July to injury to the mail and attempt to defraud West Virginia residents of a fair election.
“This conviction and sentencing should serve as a strong warning to anyone else who feels tempted to commit election fraud,” Morrisey said. “As we have stressed in the past, our team remains committed to protecting the integrity of elections in West Virginia. We will use every means provided by the law to do so.”
An investigator for Morrisey's office gathered evidence for the case on behalf of Secretary of State Mac Warner's office.
Last May, an affidavit was filed that stated that Cooper had fraudulently altered eight absentee ballot requests in Pendleton County. The complaint stated Cooper fraudulently changed the party affiliation on five from Democrat to Republican.
The affidavit that accompanied the criminal complaint also stated that Cooper accessed the ballot requests through his employment as a rural mail carrier. Cooper was the mail carrier for three towns — Onego, Riverton and Franklin — and he was responsible for delivering the mail in these towns. Cooper admitted he altered some of the requests and those alterations were then caught by election officials in the Pendleton County Courthouse and then reported to the state's Election Fraud Task Force.
"Had Cooper's conduct not been detected, it would have caused the Clerk to give Republican ballots to 5 Democrat voters — skewing the primary election by 5 votes and thereby defrauding all West Virginian's of a fair election," Bennie D. Cogar, an investigator in Morrisey's office, wrote in the May 2020 affidavit.
The West Virginia Attorney General’s Office, West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office and the U.S. Postal Service Office of the Inspector General investigated. Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Warner prosecuted the case. U.S. District Judge Thomas S. Kleeh presided.