Appalachia, Virginia

From the memory bank...

December 2006
Ben Cooper, 64, the former mayor and town manager of Appalachia who rigged an election to tighten his grip on the small coal-mining town, was convicted of 243 felonies.

Fourteen people, most of them relatives of running mate Owen "Andy" Sharrett or supporters of Cooper, were indicted. (Read full indictment here.)

The conspiracy involved forging the names of the intended voters on the stolen ballots and mailing them back to the voter registrar. Town clerk Belinda Sharrett and former police Officer Benjamin Surber -- pleaded guilty. Retired mail carrier Don Estridge found guilty in a jury trial and was sentenced to 18 months for his part. (Later slashed to one year.) Ben Cooper was sentenced to two years in prison. Former parks and recreation director Dude Sharrett got one year of electronic monitoring. He pleaded guilty and named as his co-conspirators a group of people who included his wife, two sons, an aunt, the town's former mayor, and Don Estridge.

Andy Sharrett (a town councilman swept into office by the tainted 2004 elections) was sentenced to 60 days home electronic monitoring and the rest of a three-year sentence on supervised probation, as well as community service hours to the town. Adam Sharett received a 12-month suspended jail sentence, with that year on supervised probation and 100 hours of community service to the town.

Sharrett testified that an aunt, Betty Chloe Sharrett Bolling - a longtime activist in local Democratic politics and a former poll precinct worker - figured prominently in the scheme to snare absentee ballots, ensure the tampered ballots contained all the necessary information in all the appropriate places, and made sure they got returned to the Board of Elections. Bolling filled in parts of the ballots. She pleaded guilty to 52 counts for her role in vote fraud. No sentencing information found.

There seems to have been a gambling connection.