By Gary McElroy
Staff Reporter

Darren Lee Flott, a one-time candidate for Alabama House District 98, and Angie Corine Green, an activities director for a nursing home, were both arrested and charged with voter fraud Thursday, Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr. announced.

The pair exploited a host of nursing-home patients, Tyson alleged in a news conference held in his offices at Mobile Government Plaza.

Those taken advantage of were elderly and infirm men and women, who, at the time the ballots were cast in their names, were either “comatose” or “otherwise unable to communicate” their voting preferences, Tyson said.

The first 14 counts against Flott and Green charge them with presenting absentee ballots to voting officials in the names of the infirm patients.

The remaining 39 counts accuse the pair of falsifying the ballot applications “so as to … solicit, encourage, urge or otherwise promote illegal absentee voting,” according to the indictments handed down by the June Mobile County grand jury.

Flott, 41, and Green, 49, if found guilty, face one to 10 years in prison and a $15,000 fine for each of the first 14 counts against them and one to two years of incarceration and a $500 fine for each of the 39 other counts.

The charges stem from a July 2006 Democratic runoff election, in which Flott was first announced the winner of the Prichard area House seat.

But that was voided after the results were protested by now-sitting Rep. James Gordon.

At the time, Gordon alleged that Flott’s election was tainted by scores of forged absentee ballots.

And in the wake of Gordon’s complaints, Flott, a respiratory therapist, was stripped of his win, and an investigation was launched into the allegations.

Green, also known, according to the indictments, as Angela Green, was arrested Thursday morning at the Eight Mile Nursing & Rehabilitation Center on St. Stephens Road, where she works.

Flott, who once worked at the St. Stephens facility, was arrested early Thursday afternoon at Atmore Community Hospital in Escambia County.

Tyson announced at 2:15 p.m. Thursday that Flott had been taken into custody within the hour and was being transported back to Mobile.

The district attorney said the nursing home’s legal and administrative staff assisted in his office’s investigation.

Tyson described Green and Flott as “willing to take advantage” of people unable to protect themselves.

Their actions, he said, “were fundamentally unfair” to the voting process and “an attack” on “our one-man-one-vote” system of government.

Flott, of Eight Mile, opposed Gordon, of Prichard, in last year’s Democratic primary and again in the July runoff for the seat vacated by former Rep. Bill Clark, D-Prichard.

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