Against Obama, even a jailbird gets some votes

 
No Author Published: May 9, 2012    Comment on this article Leave a comment

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Just how unpopular is President Barack Obama in some parts of the country? Enough that a man in prison in Texas got 4 out of 10 votes in West Virginia's Democratic presidential primary.

photo -   FILE - This image provided by Keith R. Judd shows the federal prisoner Keith Russell Judd, 49, at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Beaumont, Texas in this March 15, 2008 file photo. Just how unpopular is President Barack Obama in some parts of the country? Enough that Keith R. Judd in prison in Texas got 4 out of 10 votes in West Virginia's Democratic presidential primary. (AP Photo/ The Beaumont Enterprise courtesy of Keith R. Judd)
FILE - This image provided by Keith R. Judd shows the federal prisoner Keith Russell Judd, 49, at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Beaumont, Texas in this March 15, 2008 file photo. Just how unpopular is President Barack Obama in some parts of the country? Enough that Keith R. Judd in prison in Texas got 4 out of 10 votes in West Virginia's Democratic presidential primary. (AP Photo/ The Beaumont Enterprise courtesy of Keith R. Judd)

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The inmate, Keith Judd, is serving time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999. Obama received 59 percent of the vote to Judd's 41 percent.

For some West Virginia Democrats, simply running against Obama is enough to get Judd votes.

"I voted against Obama," said Ronnie Brown, a 43-year-old electrician from Cross Lanes who called himself a conservative Democrat. "I don't like him. He didn't carry the state before and I'm not going to let him carry it again."

When asked which presidential candidate he voted for, Brown said, "That guy out of Texas."

Judd got on the state ballot by paying a $2,500 fee and filing a form known as a notarized certification of announcement, said Jake Glance, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's office.

Attracting at least 15 percent of the vote would normally qualify a candidate for a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. But state Democratic Party Executive Director Derek Scarbro said no one has filed to be a delegate for Judd. The state party also believes that Judd has failed to file paperwork required of presidential candidates, but officials continue to research the matter, Scarbro said.

Voters in other conservative states showed their displeasure with Obama in Democratic primaries last March.

In Oklahoma, anti-abortion protester Randall Terry got 18 percent of the primary vote. A lawyer from Tennessee, John Wolfe, pulled nearly 18,000 votes in the Louisiana primary. In Alabama, 18 percent of Democratic voters chose "uncommitted" in the primary rather than vote for Obama.

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