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1998 - MECKLENBERG COUNTY -Kickbacks and Bribes in Mecklenberg County, NC. Culp, who spent 28 years on the job, was indicted Tuesday on federal charges he accepted kickbacks and bribes from MicroVote vendor Ed O'Day of Columbia and election-machine repairman Gene Barnes of Stuarts Draft, Va.
Repeated attempts to reach Culp were unsuccessful.
The FBI investigation has shocked many county leaders and members of Culp's staff, who describe him as a loyal boss who expected much of them, and treated them well in return. http://www.billjames.org/Bill%20James%20Web%20Pages/Bill%20Culp%20Scandal%20-%20Observer%20articles.htm
Ex-Meck official indicted (more on Culp)
Former Mecklenburg County Elections Supervisor Bill Culp was indicted by a federal grand jury July 7 on charges that he accepted more than $134,000 in kickbacks and bribes from a voting machine repairman and a salesman who won millions in county contracts. The indictment follows a six-month FBI investigation.
Federal sources say Culp and the two others charged -- Ed O'Day, president of Columbia-based United American Election Supply Co. and Gene Barnes, a self-employed repairman from Stuarts Draft, Va. -- will receive summonses and likely make their first court appearance this month. Culp retired in February as elections director after 28 years. http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/1998/07/13/weekinbiz.html
Culp knows it. He left a Maryland prison in September and lives in a Charlotte, N.C., halfway house, where he is ending a 30-month sentence for accepting 122 bribes and kickbacks worth more than $134,000 from January 1990 to March 1998.
Voting machines he bought from the salesman who paid him off had enough problems that he wrote four letters of complaint even as he was taking the bribes.
In Bill Culp's case, Mecklenburg County bought the newest technology: 1,200 MicroVote 464 electronic voting machines. Culp pushed hard for the purchase. It brought MicroVote $5.25 million.
It was reeling from setbacks in Montgomery County, Pa., north of Philadelphia, where its machines kept shutting down during a November 1995 election. The computers froze as voters scrolled through a three-page electronic ballot. The county even announced the wrong winners.
Glitches resurfaced the following spring. Montgomery County sued MicroVote and traded the machines to another company, which turned around and resold them. In 1997, Culp and his county bought 400 of Montgomery County's rejects from O'Day.
Publicly enthusiastic, Culp privately complained about the same defects that led to the chaos in Pennsylvania. "The obvious weakness in the scrolling mechanism concerns us," he wrote to the company on May 13, 1996 http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-vote-wares.story
See the "Bribery: page for more about the history of these machines and the bribery scandal. |
