Dry Fork, West Virginia mail carrier Thomas Cooper has been sentenced in connection with the manipulation of absentee voter requests. The Pendleton County man was sentenced to six months, which will be served on home confinement. He pleaded guilty last July to fraudulently altering eight absentee ballot requests, changing the party affiliation on five from Democrat to Republican. The alterations were discovered by an elections official in the Pendleton County Courthouse, and reported it to the state’s Election Fraud Task Force.