Widespread Vote Buying in Eastern Kentucky Revealed
In this week’s voter fraud segment with Eric Shawn, he unveiled shocking details of drug dealers buying votes to steal elections after prosecutors revealed the widespread practice of buying and selling votes in Eastern Kentucky. One man he spoke with was paid $25 dollars by a candidate in a local election for his vote. Richard Moore told Shawn that just about everybody sells votes and while he thinks it needs to be stopped, he doesn't believe it will because “that’s where the money’s at.”
Over the past two years, more than twenty public officials and others have been convicted in schemes to steal elections. Moore testified for the prosecution that he sold his vote to Michael Salyers, who was running for county magistrate. Salyers explained how the vote buying process
took place, “The sellers in this situation, they would come to me and ask how much I was paying for votes … I said most I could pay you is $25 dollars.”
He recalled one man who had four votes, so Salyers gave him $100 dollars. Salyers is currently spending 60 days in jail and says, “That’s the worst thing in this whole situation is the shame, is the people I let down.”
US attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, Kerry Harvey, told Shawn that they believe drug money bought votes. In Clay County, prosecutors say that over the course of several elections, $400,000 dollars was spent to buy the votes of 8,000 voters for $50 dollars each. Harvey said, “These folks go out and literally hijack the local elections for their own purposes and then they use those jobs to enrich themselves and their confederates.”
State officials are trying to clean up elections with a special voter integrity task force. Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway expressed that, “If you sell you vote you’re selling the heart of democracy. If the government belongs to someone who’s out there buying votes rather than the free will of the people, then it doesn’t belong to everybody.”
