Idaho Briefs January 11, 2012

Absentee ballot

applications available

A revised absentee ballot application form is now on the Kootenai County website, the county clerk announced on Tuesday.

The new version, which includes the addition of party affiliation information, was just released by the secretary of state and is required for all counties to use, Clerk Cliff Hayes said.

More than 100 have already sent in the old form requesting absentee ballots, he noted.

"We should have had the revised form last year," he said.

Elections will mail those individuals a new form that they have to fill out again, he said.

"I'm really sorry for inconveniencing the voting public," Hayes said.

The new ballot form can be accessed at: www.kcgov.us/elections/

Man took dead mom's benefits

BOISE (AP) - A 57-year-old Boise man has pleaded guilty to taking nearly $36,000 in government payments deposited into his mother's bank account in the two years after she died.

The U.S. attorney's office says Paul Richard McLeod pleaded guilty to receiving stolen government money during a hearing Monday.

Federal prosecutors say that McLeod's mother died in June 2008, but the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs continued to pay monthly dependent compensation payments to her until July 2010.

The payments were deposited in a joint account shared by McLeod and his mother.