West Virginia: Officials question ballot procedures – Tennant still under fire for inmate on ballot | News and Sentinel

The West Virginia Legislature can control who can get on a primary election ballot, but it can’t exceed federal law on a candidate’s eligibility, election officials said. State officials and others have been looking at options after imprisoned felon Keith Judd attracted nearly 41 percent of the vote against President Barack Obama this month in the West Virginia primary. While there have been criticisms Judd should never have gotten on the ballot, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant said Judd met all of the legal requirements to be on the ballot. Judd qualified for the Democratic primary ballot after he mailed in a candidacy form and paid a $2,500 filing fee from Texas. He’s serving a 17-year federal prison sentence in Texas. Statewide results from the May 8 primary show Judd with 73,138 votes to Obama’s 106,770.

West Virginia: State frets over felon’s performance | Politico.com

The nation has moved on after its brief fixation last week with the felon who won 41 percent against Barack Obama, but West Virginia continues to wrestle with the aftermath of its May 8 primary. Phil Kabler of the Charleston Gazette reported this weekend on two conspiracy theories making the rounds. The first holds that GOP operatives were working behind the scenes to gin up the vote for Keith Judd as a means of embarassing Obama. The second speculates that top Democratic Party officials “went to lengths to assure that West Virginia voters would not be aware that he was a convicted inmate sitting in a federal prison in Texas.”

Maryland: Keith Russell Judd, federal inmate who challenged Obama in West Virginia, tried to get on Maryland ballot | baltimoresun.com

Keith Russell Judd, better known as the federal inmate who scored 41 percent of the vote against President Barack Obama in the West Virginia primary, wanted to be on the ballot in Maryland, too. Without Judd in his path, Obama cruised to an 88 percent victory. Blame U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett, who last year dismissed Judd’s complaint against the Maryland State Board of Elections in which he alleged he was being wrongly kept on the ballot. Bennett referred to Judd, who is serving a 210-month sentence in a Texas federal prison for extortion, as a “prolific and vexatious litigant who has filed more than 748 cases in federal courts since 1997.” Restrictions or sanctions have been placed on Judd’s “abusive filings,” Bennett wrote, by at least six courts. He concluded Judd’s claims were “frivolous and a patent ruse to waste judicial time and resources.”

West Virginia: Legislators eye ballot rules after felon’s primary run | MariettaTimes.com

An imprisoned felon’s surprising showing in West Virginia’s Tuesday primary has officials reviewing the rules governing how candidates get their names on the ballot. Keith Judd received more than 72,400 votes against President Barack Obama, around 41 percent of the total, providing stark evidence of the incumbent Democrat’s unpopularity in the state. Judd has run for president since at least 1996, frequently petitioning to get on the ballot in West Virginia and other states. But since 1999, he’s pursued his candidacies from federal prison: he’s serving a 17-year sentence for making threats, and is currently held at the Texarkana Federal Correctional Institute in Texas. Senate Judiciary Chairman Corey Palumbo sees this topic as ripe for legislative review during the monthly interim study meetings that begin next week.

West Virginia: Keith Judd: How the felon won | Politico.com

So how did a felon incarcerated in a Texas prison manage to win 41 percent of the Democratic primary vote against the president of the United States? For starters, Keith Judd was either clever or lucky enough to have filed for the ballot in the heart of Appalachia’s anti-Obama belt. West Virginia’s county-by-county numbers tell an interesting story: Judd defeated the incumbent president in 9 counties across the state, and held him under 60 percent in 30 of West Virginia’s 55 counties.  Whatever other forces may be at work in the Appalachian opposition to Obama — the role of race has been debated since his 2008 run — it’s clear the administration’s energy policies played a big role in the president’s lackluster performance. Locally, it’s referred to as “the war on coal.”