Remember Colin Small?
He is the employee of Nathan Sproul's GOP-connected company which has been accused of multiple episodes of voter suppression. Back in October Small was caught tossing registration forms in a dumpster. He was charged with 13 counts, including 8 felonies. Yesterday the felony counts were dropped by (Republican) prosecutor Marsha Garst. Many more details are at http://www.bradblog.com/... including:
Unlike other Commonwealth Attorneys, observed a local Democratic-leaning political muckraker yesterday, Garst failed to recuse herself from the prosecution despite what would appear to be very clear conflicts of interests in the case.
and
Tribbet, citing the WHSV report, notes that "Small's defense was he thought the people who filled out these forms were 'already registered'. So he drove to a random dumpster to throw them out instead of just putting them in the trash at his office? This doesn't pass the laugh test."
Bradblog has a very complete writeup.
5:34 PM PT: HuffPost article 1
HuffPost article 2
Apparently the felony charges were for disclosure of the information on the voter registration forms, such as SSN's. The actual voter obstruction charges were misdemeanors all along for some reason. The argument for dropping the felony charges was that the information on the forms never got exposed to anyone who shouldn't see it.
I do note that like most articles out there, these say that the judge (Marvin Hillsman) dismissed the charges, while BradBlog says
"Notice the charges were dropped - not dismissed by a judge," observes Tribbet, "so that decision came from Garst and her office." Other media accounts, based largely on commentary from Small's attorney, report that the charges were dismissed by the judge.