Polygamist sect could lose its grip on tiny Utah community in landmark vote

[Loyd]

Source: The Guardian

Tuesday 7 November 2017 15.12 EST

A tiny group of voters could deliver one of the most significant results in local US elections on Tuesday when ballots are counted in a far-flung town run by members of a polygamist sect under the control of a so-called prophet from a prison cell.

For the first time in its troubled history, Hildale, a speck in the wilderness on the Utah-Arizona border, has candidates running for mayor and town council seats who are not associated with the local fundamentalist religious sect, currently run by notorious convicted child rapist Warren Jeffs.

If mayoral candidate Donia Jessop and the three “outsiders” competing for council seats all win their races against incumbents on Tuesday, non-sect members will effectively win control of the town.

“If we win we would take the majority of the council and that’s a big deal, then we could start the process for the whole town changing,” Jessop told the Guardian.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/07/polygamist-sect-hildale-utah-election-outsiders

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I'm hopeful, but skeptical. That part of the country is firmly in Wingnut Nation.

[TygrBright]

1. They've already lost their grip on reality... but it seems to make no difference. n/t

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Going to be interesting how

these two Towns look tomorrow at this time.

[snooper2]

9. If we just let them to their own thing it is an interesting science experiment

With the in-breeding I was wondering how long it would take the town to look like this

[Wellstone ruled]

10. Yup.

[BigmanPigman]

3. I thought that after he was arrested the cult kept a low profile.

There was a lengthy article in Rolling Stone and that is what was implied.

[SergeStorms]

4. Jeffs is stark, raving mad.

"Marrying" 13 year old girls, just to have sex with them. He deserves to be castrated, then flogged with barbed wire, then hung by the neck until dead. Now there's some good old testament punishment for you, Jeffs.

[Mosby]

6. He's not crazy, he's a perv.

[SergeStorms]

8. They have his prison cell.....

on 24 hr. watch (closed circuit TV) and if you could see some of the things he does in there you'd most likely agree with the crazy description. There is absolutely NO doubt that he's a perv as well. He's a very disturbed man, and should never set foot on this planet a free man.

[displacedtexan]

5. With sect members in and around law enforcement, nothing will really change.

Law enforcement officers and civilian office workers and court clerks, etc., will still have access to databases, which they can use to target enemies of the sect, those who risk everything to escape, and other law enforcement agencies possibly investigating the sect.

If that's the town I've read about, it crosses the state border, which increases its range of access to data.

[AllyCat]

7. It looks like they have done it. Two of them anyway

Jessop for mayor and nichol for alder? Preliminary results only and one is by only 3 votes. Fingers crossed.