The Lenoir County poll worker at the center of an alleged voter fraud incident has been identified.
“We had no intention of releasing the suspect’s name until the investigation was complete,” said Lenoir County Bored of Elections Chairman Robert Wagner. “Our data security system — a rubber band wrapped around a spiral notebook — evidently failed in this case.”
The suspect — Paulette Burroughs, 39, of 4876 Divorce Court, La Grange — is a lifelong political operative who, as of this writing, is employed by The Kinston Free Press as lead mashugana. Against the advice of family, council and clergy, Burroughs agreed to an interview.
“I grew up in West Virginia, and voter fraud is a common thing up there,” Burroughs said. “In 1960, Joe Kennedy Sr. paid off every local official in the state to help his son get the nomination.
“You remember that hangin’ chad mess in Florida a few years back? I was the one who made sure the pencils were too dull to punch all the way through the paper. Karl Rove had a public restroom in Texas named after me for that job.
“After G. Gordon Liddy got out of prison, I worked as his personal assistant for two years. My main job was to walk his mustache three times a day.”
Burroughs said the incident from 2010 was just a case of an accidental double booking.
“I don’t mess with agents or managers,” Burroughs said. “I handle all of my business, and somehow I mistakenly signed up to work for the Democrats and the Republicans that year. Both groups compensated me, so I felt obliged to give them what they paid for.”
Burroughs says in 2010 while working a shift at a La Grange polling place — Larry’s Tax and Taxidermy — she voted a straight party ticket for the Democrats early in the morning. After lunch, she returned in a disguise to vote a straight Republican ticket. Paulette Burroughs says disguised herself as her brother, noted novelist and junkie William S. Burroughs.
“When his novel ‘Naked Lunch’ became a hit in 1959, he swore he’d never come home again,” Burroughs said. “I told everybody at the polling place I was William S. Burroughs, and that I was filling in for my sick sister. They were all really surprised to see my brother, especially since he’d been dead since 1997.”
Asked if she feels speaking so freely to the press could land her in jail, Burroughs scoffed at the notion.
“I know too much about everybody around here to pull any significant time,” Burroughs said. “If they want to send me to con college for a few months just to put on a good show, that’s fine. Most of my buddies are in the Greybar Hotel, so it’ll be like a high school reunion with three hots and a cot.”
Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase books, music and typewriters that morph into talking bugs at jondawson.com.
