By ANDREW W. GRIFFIN

Oklahoma Watchdog, editor

Posted: July 16, 2010

andrew@oklahomawatchdog.org

OKLAHOMA CITY — Adair County Assistant District Attorney Larry Langley confirmed Friday that Darryl Cates, the Westville, Okla. man charged with four counts of felony voter fraud, turned himself in to Adair County authorities this week and later was released on bond.

Interestingly, Langley returned a call to Oklahoma Watchdog today – Friday – two days after we had left a message for him to call us requesting that he comment on the Cates case since he had filed the charges on Tuesday. Apparently, his secretary had told him this reproter was an attorney, which was why he was calling back. I explained that I had told his secretary that I was a reporter with Oklahoma Watchdog. This seemed to shock Langley who then seemed less open to talk about the case at that point.

Still, he did comment on a few of our questions.

“We’ve been investigating for quite some time,” Langley said, when asked how long they had been working on a case against Cates.

“Accused him of submitting absentee ballots not by people whose names were on them,” Langley said.

A source in Adair County has been keeping Oklahoma Watchdog informed of what has been going on there on the ground. This source said they were told Cates allegedly “brings in the applications for the ballot” and then “Cates often offers to mail them for the person.” The source said that a person cannot “even offer the person a stamp” when doing notary work for people needing to send in absentee ballots.

The source then told Oklahoma Watchdog: “The bad thing is, all those ballots will be mailed to Cates’ address even for the run-off election and the general election unless something legal is done to prevent it because they have already been requested in advance for those elections.”

Adair County District Attorney Jerry Moore told Oklahoma Watchdog on Wednesday that he had “no knowledge” of any ballots that may be en route to Cates, since the four voter fraud charges were filed earlier this week.

Copyright 2010 Oklahoma Watchdog