CHAPTER SEVEN CONCLUSION WHY PROSECUTING ELECTION CRIMES IS IMPORTANT We conclude this book with an editorial printed in the March 19, 2004, edition of Big Sandy News, Eastern Kentucky, concerning a series of election fraud prosecutions in a rural jurisdiction in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky. The editorial comments on the sentencing of the County JudgeExecutive of Knott County and a campaign worker for votebuying. It appears here with the permission of The Big Sandy News, whose late Publisher and Editor, Scott Perry, led a strong charge against public corruption and took a proactive role in this difficult and ongoing fight. 70 In Kentucky, county judge-executives are the chief operating officers of county government, and, as such, occupy a position of substantial power. The jury’s conviction of Knott County Judge-Executive Donnie Newsome was the culmination of a series of vote-buying cases that were jointly prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky and the Public Integrity Section during 2003 and early 2004. The charges arose from a scheme to pay individuals for voting in the 1998 Kentucky federal primary in violation of 52 U.S.C. § 10307(c). The investigation ultimately resulted in the indictment of 17 defendants. Thirteen of the defendants were convicted, three were acquitted, and one defendant’s case was dismissed on a motion to dismiss made by the government. The Big Sandy News, Eastern Kentucky’s oldest newspaper and the most widely circulated non-daily in Kentucky, was established in 1885 in Louisa, Kentucky. 70 197