Bella's Blog

Sex offfender remains on ballot

WILMER, Texas (UPI) -- A registered sex offender who missed the deadline for taking his name off the ballot remains a mayoral candidate in a small town near Dallas.

Wilmer City Secretary Crystol Birdwell told the Dallas Morning News the ballots were already printed by the time J. Brian Sliter decided to leave the race -- he says because of death threats.

Birdwell said she was told that putting up signs to let voters know Sliter is not a candidate would be election interference. She then asked what would happen if Sliter outpolls the two other candidates next Saturday.

"They told me we would cross that bridge when we came to it," she said.

Sliter was arrested in 2004 after investigators said he arranged to meet someone he thought was a 15-year-old girl. In fact, the person he had been chatting with on the Internet was an undercover police officer.

He received deferred adjudication, so his record will be cleared if he stays out of trouble for a decade, although he is a registered sex offender in the meantime.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International