(Photo by Joe Kovacs)
A Democrat county supervisor in Virginia has been accused of dozens of counts of vote fraud in a case in which prosecutors allege he showed up at the homes of voters, with absentee ballot applications and ballots, to ensure he would have their vote.
It is broadcaster WJHL that reported Knox District Supervisor for Buchanan County Trey Adkins is facing 82 felony charges handed down by a grand jury.
Those include 34 counts of false statement – election fraud, 11 counts of absentee voting procedure violations, 11 counts of forgery of a public record, 3 counts of conspiracy to make a false statement – election fraud, and more.
Also indicted, according to a statement from Russell County Commonwealth’s Attorney Zach Stoots, was Sherry Lynn Bailey, who is Adkins' aunt, and allegedly took part in the scheme too.
She's facing multiple counts of false statement – election fraud, conspiracy and forgery of a public record.
Prosecutors said Adkins was under investigation by Virginia State Police for over two years.
Authorities said they would have little further to release before a trial.
"The Rules of Professional Conduct prevents any lawyer participating in the prosecution of a criminal matter that may be tried to a jury from making an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or should know will have a likelihood of interfering with the fairness of a trial by jury," prosecutors released in a statement.
National File reported the grand jury alleged "Adkins has relied on an illegal absentee vote harvesting scheme since he was first elected to public office in 2011, repeating the process in his 2015 and 2019 bids for re-election."
The report said, "Investigations have shown that the scheme included hundreds of absentee ballots per election cycle and Adkins, with the help of his aunt, is said to have personally run the operation, showing up at the homes of voters himself with absentee applications and ballots to ensure he would have their vote."
The report noted Buchanan County is a small community, and the "margin of victory" in the elections was usually within a couple hundred votes.
In a statement, Adkins claimed, "It went on 10 years ago at one of my prior elections, my first election that I won, uh, you know, voters that voted absentee got harassed and asked various questions and had a target on their back."
He said he won't be stepping down from office.
MSN reported Adkins also said in a Facebook statement, "We knew this would come to a head eventually, and it has. The charges are out there, we know what we're facing, we know what the accusations are and we're thankful for that. It's going to bring an end to it."
Adkins claimed the problems stem from "how the envelopes were witnessed."
"So, you know, it's not that somebody didn't get to vote the way they wanted to, or there was some kind of big fraud going on," he said.
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