Vote fraud & crack: a case for Dick Tracy?

Vote fraud & crack: a case for Dick Tracy?

When Defiance County election officials got a batch of voter registration cards for Dick Tracy, Mary Poppins, Michael Jordan and George Foreman, they might have wondered whether the per son who gathered the cards was smoking crack.

Maybe not, but he was being paid for his trouble in crack cocaine, said Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick.

On Monday, sheriff's deputies arrested Chad Staton, 22, of Defiance, who admitted to investiga tors that he filled out about 130 registration cards, making up the names and addresses. He said he was hired by a Toledo woman to solicit voter registrations.

She gave him a choice of cash or drugs for his work, Westrick said. He chose crack cocaine.

Deputies from Defiance County in northwest Ohio and Toledo police searched the woman's Toledo house, confiscating drug paraphernalia and voter registration forms, Westrick said.

The occupant of the house, Georgianne Pitts, 41, told investigators that she was recruited for the voter registration drive by Thaddeus Jackson, Ohio director of the NAACP's National Voter Fund.

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