Mail Carrier Allegedly Trashed Voter Guides for Atlantic City, South Pass City
A subcontractor mail carrier allegedly trashed bundles of League of Women voter guides addressed to households in Atlantic City and South Pass City, according to federal court records.
Zechariah Morgan is charged with misdemeanor counts of destruction of mail and desertion of mails, according to the criminal information document filed in U.S. District Court on Monday.
If convicted, Morgan faces up to a year imprisonment and a $100,000 fine and up to a year of supervised release after custody for each count. He could be placed on probation for up to five years as an alternative to prison.
Morgan did not have a listed phone number and could not be reached for comment. The docket for the case did not show that he had an attorney.
He is scheduled to make his initial appearance to hear the charges at the federal court office in Lander on Oct. 28, according to the court docket.
The case started on Thursday when a U.S. Postal Service contractor in Lander reported a customer in South Pass City said she saw her mail carrier discarding mail in a trash can on Sept. 18, according to an affidavit by a postal inspector.
The contractor had hired Morgan in May as the mail carrier for the route that included South Pass City and Atlantic City, according to the affidavit.
The customer told the contractor that she saw something pornographic, as well as voter guides and other mail in the trash. The postal inspector learned that Morgan's route had received 449 Every Door Direct Mail voter guides from the League of Women Voters.
These were not absentee, or mail-in, ballots.
The contractor talked to Morgan, who said he didn't deliver the voter guides because the mail boxes were always full.
On Friday, the postal inspector interviewed Morgan, who said he had thrown away bundles of voter guides and flyers from Spectrum, according to the affidavit. "Morgan stated he had thrown away pornographic material in the past, as he was not comfortable delivering it."
Morgan also told the postal inspector that he had thrown away mail in the past probably six to 10 times. The only first-class mail he said he had thrown away was pornographic mail, according to the affidavit.
The EDDM mailing was a project of the Fremont County chapter of the League of Women Voters, said Susan Simpson, president of the Wyoming League of Women Voters.
The nonpartisan, educational guide covers races at the federal, state, Fremont County, city and town levels, and is based on surveys answered by candidates, Simpson said.
She didn't know whether the LWV would take any action in the Morgan case, "except to declare that interfering with nonpartisan attempts to educate voters about candidates for office, using the candidates' own words, undermine the election process and thus our democracy."
PHOTOS: 1923 Cole Creek Train Wreck in Wyoming