District 22 race turns ugly with double-voting claim
Olson denies Lampson charge he cast a ballot in Connecticut in '03
By ALAN BERNSTEIN
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 27, 2008, 11:24PM
One day in 2003, someone drew a neat line through Republican Pete Olson's name to show he had voted in person in a local referendum in Newton, Conn., where his parents lived.
But Olson, now running against U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Stafford, also voted on other days that year in Virginia, while working as a staffer in Washington, D.C., for Texas Sen. John Cornyn.
Olson says he wasn't in Connecticut for the election in Newton and didn't cast the vote; that the marking of his name on the voter list could have been a clerical error or someone using his name to cast a fraudulent vote.
But as the Nov. 4 election approaches in Texas' 22nd Congressional District, the Lampson campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a Democratic group called the Lone Star Project have made the ballot records a major point of attack against Olson.
In turn, Olson has called those tactics "a willful disregard for the truth, and guided by the lowest form of political attack."
Lone Star Project — which has sent money and data to Harris County to help elect Democratic candidates and is run by a Democratic former congressional aide — has alleged in writing to Virginia prosecutors that Olson committed a felony by double-voting in two states.
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