SATURDAY OKLAHOMA TIMES
Saturday, August 12, 1983
Witnesses Put Draper At Vote Fraud Scene
By Joyce Peterson
MUSKOGEE-House Speaker Dan Draper was in the back room of a country grocery store on the night that absentee ballots were being notarized fraudulently two eye witnesses said Friday.
The testimony of the two witnesses in the mail fraud and conspiracy trial of Draper clashed on details of exactly what happened when, but both placed Draper in the back room of the Adair County grocery.
The witnesses were notary Faye Newton and John Girdner, son of alleged co-conspirator, Barney Girdner. The room was in the back of the Girdner family grocery.
The two differed on ….recess until Monday morning, when the prosecution will resume.
Draper and his co-defendant, Majority Floor leader Joe Fitzgibbon, are accused of conspiring with several persons to use fraudulent absentee ballots to swing a House district runoff primary in favor of Draper’s father, Daniel Draper II.
The elder Draper lost that runoff. He has not been implicated in any allegations of wrongdoing.
Barney Girdner, a Sallisaw man who was eliminated in the primary of that race, and members of his family are accused of first setting up the scheme to obtain the ballots and vote them for Girdner.
When Girdner lost the…..testimony revolved around the defense’s contention that although Draper was at the store, he wasn’t aware the absentee ballots being notarized were bogus.
The prosecution continued trying to prove that the room the group was in was too small and the group’s actions too obvious for Draper not to have known.
Barney Girdner’s son, John, 26, took the stand Friday to describe how the family, Draper and Mrs. Newton met in the back of the family grocery the night of Sept. 14 to vote and notarize about 30 absentee ballots.
The people in whose names the ballots were issued were not present.
“Somehow, we’d got….. where from,” the younger Girdner testified.
Girdner collaborated earlier testimony by his father that Draper arrived at the store and walked into the back room while Mrs. Newton was notarizing, John and his aunt were marking ballots, and other ballots were laying open on a table and bed.
“Everybody stopped working so we could shake hands and be introduced to Mr. Draper,” John Girdner testified.
Although he said he couldn’t positively say at the moment Draper walked in, he was “going through them” as was his aunt Mrs. Ruth Ann Hembree, he said.
…one come in while she was notarizing ballots.
She also said she didn’t see anyone marking the ballots she was notarizing.
“I don’t remember anyone’s wrong but my own,” she told the jury.
She had spent the earlier part of the evening driving around to homes on the back roads of the area with Mrs. Hembree and Barney’s mother, Dora Girdner, notarizing ballots for the people that lived there.
When she returned after one such trip, Barney showed her about 20 ballots which he said had been left by people who came to the store while they were gone.
She notarized those, then left again with Mrs. Girdner to go to some more houses.
When assistant U.S. Attorney Donn Baker asked her if Draper had come in while she was notarizing those, she said she couldn’t say.
“I’m not saying there wasn’t anybody else, I just didn’t see anybody else,” she said.
Later Baker asked her, “Could he have been there and you not know it?”
“A lot of people could have been there and me not know it,” she answered.
On cross examination, defense attorney Bruce Green asked if U.S. Attorney Gary Richardson could have been there and she wouldn’t know it.
Richardson, however, jumped to his feet to object and the judge wouldn’t let her answer.
Mrs. Newton said after she notarized the ballots, she left again with Mrs. Girdner. When they returned, they went into the back room and Draper was there.
“He came over and introduced himself to me,” she said.
At the time, she testified, she couldn’t recall seeing any ballots anywhere, nor could she remember any conversation about any ballots.
A few minutes later, she said she, Draper, and Mrs. Hembree got in a pickup truck to drive to the home of a local resident because they wanted Draper to meet him. “He was a character. It was as like they thought you hadn’t lived until you met him.”
Mrs. Newton said the man had no ballot.
The three then came back to the store and Draper paid her $40 for notarizing the ballots before they parted ways.
“He asked me how much he owed me and had taken some money out of his pocket,” she said.
“I told him I didn’t know, I had never done anything like that before. He told me he never had either, he was just down here trying to do everything he could to help his father.”
Baker attempted to discredit part of Mrs. Newton’s testimony by showing variances between it and her testimony before a grand jury.
“If you didn’t believe her second story why did you dismiss charges against her.” The judge asked.
Both John Girdner and Mrs. Newton, as well as several other witnesses in the trial, have made agreements with the prosecutors that they will testify and in exchange no charges will be filed or they will be treated leniently.
Earlier in the day, former legislator Bob Parris, a Sallisaw accountant, testified that Draper had telephoned him shortly before the runoff asking where he could find someone to notarize absentee ballots.
Parris phoned around town until he found Mrs. Newton, who was willing to drive to Adair County, he testified.
Earlier, Parris’s wife, Caroll, took the stand to testify that she had fraudulently notarized a group of ballots for Barney Girdner before the primary.
When her husband told her Dan Draper was asking for a notary, she said she refused to go because it was her bowling night.
“I told him I wasn’t notarizing anything. I was going bowling,” she said.
Parris said he didn’t believe that Draper had done anything wrong. During his conversation with Draper, Parris said he told Draper that there was an investigation going on into absentee ballot fraud in that part of Adair Count. Draper said he knew.
“I’ve been trying to think in the last couple of days what word he used, but he said he wasn’t going to get into that kind of hanky panky,” Parris testified.
“He did this thing he does, like he said “O.K.” and I said “O.K.”.
“I knew what kind of person Draper is and I knew he had better sense than to get into something ridiculous,” Parris said.
Baker also tried to impeach Parris’ testimony by using his grand jury remarks. At one point, Parris became visibly agitated and told Barker to “ask me questions I can answer, Jesus Christ.”
“I’ve been waiting six weeks to come in here and testify that Dan Draper called me to get a notary and that’s all I did … I’ve been wooled around in the newspapers and everywhere else and that’s all I did.”
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