12-7-16 Texas:
Sex offenders at treatment center sue for alleged rights violations
AUSTIN - Like millions of Americans who wanted to have their say, more than 100 men inside a West Texas treatment center for sexually violent predators registered to vote in last month's presidential election.
Local election officials, however, refused to count their ballots, a decision that attorneys say likely violates federal and state laws.
The tossed-out votes now are the subject of a growing legal fight in the small town that once begged to get the treatment center for the jobs and the multimillion-dollar payroll that it brought, but now appears to be having second thoughts about the more than 200 convicted sex offenders that came with it.
"They didn't want us going out into their community, so they made us vote by mail, and now they're denying us the right to vote at all," said Clarence Brown, 54, one of the men in the Billy Clayton Center (See pics top of article HERE) whose ballots were rejected. "This place isn't supposed to be a prison, but this run-down, bigoted little town is trying to make it one so we can't exercise our constitutional right to vote. Even if they don't like us, what they have done is not legal."
