Georgia GOP candidate allegedly voted 9 times as a felon

Georgia law prohibits felons from voting, but conservative Georgia talk show host, election denier and GOP state House candidate Brian K. Pritchard seems to have cast ballots in nine elections while on probation for a felony.

Even as he inveighed against election fraud, the Republican, who announced his candidacy earlier this month for state House of Representatives, voted while serving a sentence for a $33,000 forgery and theft case, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday.

Each vote cast broke the law, the Georgia attorney general’s office said last week, according to the Journal-Constitution. No sooner had Pritchard qualified on Monday to run in a special election to replace the late Speaker David Ralston, than he found himself defending his actions and saying his right to vote was intact and his sentence was long gone.

“I’ve not done anything wrong here,” Pritchard told the Journal-Constitution on Monday. “I guess if you’re apprehending public enemy No. 1, here I am.”

In 1996 he pleaded guilty to three felonies — two counts of forgery and one of theft by failure to make a required disposition of funds, the Journal-Constitution reported, citing court records from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

He served probation and was required to make more than $33,000 in restitution payments. Pritchard registered to vote in Georgia in 2008, then proceeded to vote in nine elections between then and the end of his felony probation sentence in 2011, the newspaper said.

Pritchard runs local news site FetchYourNews.com. He is running against another Republican from northeast Georgia: David Ralston’s widow, Sheree Ralston. David Ralston died last month at age 68, not long after announcing he’d step down over health concerns.

The two will face off on Jan. 3, with a runoff on Jan. 31 if no one wins the first time.

With News Wire Services