Poll worker says 'tight pants' contributed to gaffe

EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- The poll worker who called a polling place "Obama's house" in front of a television news crew apologized -- then accused the local TV station of altering its footage to incriminate her.Kim Minor also told the Vanderburgh County Election Board that her "tight pants" were partly to blame for the remarks broadcast by WTVW-FOX7 and posted on YouTube.Afterward, Election Board members Tom Massey, David Shaw and County Clerk Susan Kirk voted 3-0 to turn over WTVW-FOX7's unedited tape of the incident to the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor's Office for investigation.Bob Walters, news director of WTVW-FOX7, called Minor's remarks "totally ridiculous" and her theory of videotape manipulation impossible for the local station.Minor, a Democrat, and Republican poll worker Leon "Big Man" Collins, who called the polling place at Zion Missionary Baptist Church "McCain's house," told the Election Board that the incident on May 6 was not intentional."I cannot express the mistake that I made," Minor said. "... I've got no excuse for it, I'm not going to try to make an excuse for it. I made a mistake."In WTVW-FOX7's broadcast, Minor is shown saying, "This is (Barack) Obama's house," chanting Obama's name and asking who in the polling place supports the Illinois Democrat. Collins says it is "(John) McCain's house."When Minor asks who supports Obama, she looks over her right shoulder -- where the tape shows the voting machines were stationed -- and appears to be counting people."One, two, three, four, five," she says, pointing around the room.But facing the Election Board on Friday, Minor accused WTVW-FOX7 of altering its tape of the incident to make it appear voters were present when they were not."I think Fox 7 cut out some of this here, and put this here, because when this was going on, it was nobody in there, it was just us workers, the watchers -- that's all that was in there," she said. "There wasn't no voters in there. When Fox 7 showed it, they showed voters back there at the polls. It was nobody in there."After the meeting, Kirk said the point is moot because the presence or absence of voters has no bearing on illegal electioneering in polling places."The statute says there is no electioneering within 50 feet of the polling place, period," she said. "It does not say if there's no voters in there, if it's just poll workers, this and that."Walters said Hollywood moviemakers may be able to insert people who weren't present into a scene, but "in the world of local TV, it doesn't exist.""You can't add somebody into a shot," he said. "We'd have absolutely no reason to do that."Minor also told the Election Board that her remarks in the polling place could be attributed to her ill temper on a bad day. She said she had been annoyed when a poll worker under Collins' charge left the church without authorization to get some food, when food was already available."My pants were too tight," she said. "I mean, you know, they were, like, cutting into my side. And I couldn't leave to go change my pants.""... Maybe a little stuff had built up in me, and that's when I went too far."(Contact Thomas B. Langhorne of The Evansville Courier & Journal in Indiana at langhornet(at)courierpress.com