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their own. The sealed ballot also can be mailed in by someone other than the voter.
Fitz-Hugh said she notified the attorney general’s office on Monday about the irregularities, which included problems in Arlington and Page counties as well as Wise.
Bert Rohrer, a spokesman for Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, said the office has offered to assist in the Wise County probe but has not been asked to do so.
Brenda Merica, voter registrar in Page, said the existing absentee system has been around for years and allows voting by people who might have trouble getting to the polls because they live in remote mountain areas.
But Fitz-Hugh said there were indications that absentee ballots were used as a convenience by people who did not want to take the trouble to show up at the polls.
“Most of the applications from Wise indicated that people needed absentee ballots because business reasons would keep them from the polls,” she said. “But now I’m hearing that a lot of the people who said that are unemployed.”
State law generally allows absentee voting by students, disabled people, military service people and individuals whose business will keep them from being at their home precinct on election day.
David Mullins, a detective in the Wise County Sheriffs Department, said the local probe has focused on absentee ballots mailed in by people other than those who actually voted.
Officials said as many as 100 of the 800 absentee ballots sent in by Wise County voters may have fit that category. The county, with a population of 45,200, had only 300 fewer absentee ballots than far more populous Chesterfield County, a Richmond suburb with almost 158 000 residents. ’
* Meantime, votinS records in Wise indicate that 21 absentee ballots were mailed to the address of Coebum Police Chief F. Harold Markham, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Thursday. The newspaper said 20 other absentee ballots went to four relatives of Markham who is Democratic chairman of the Coebum Dre^ cinct.
^ nearly 100 absentee ballots were sent to five people, including a deputy sheriff and a candidate for local office, the newspaper said.
V
90.8%