Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009

Vote panel defied in Atlantic Beach

A group of Atlantic Beach residents is calling for the resignation of two of the town's election officials, a week after a controversial election.

The Atlantic Beach Concerned Citizens wants Alice Graham, the town election commission chairwoman, and Commissioner Linda Booker to resign because they say the two women attempted to hold a "fraudulent election," said Patricia Bellamy, the group's president. On Tuesday, Bellamy turned in a letter to the Atlantic Beach Town Hall addressed to Graham with details of the group's reasoning.

Graham and Booker could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The election commission will have a hearing at 10 a.m. today at the Atlantic Beach Community Center to discuss protests by Town Council incumbents ousted last week by two write-in candidates, Windy Price and Carolyn Cole. It was scheduled for Saturday, but was postponed because the commission's attorney could not attend the hearing.

Paul Curry and incumbent councilwomen Charlene Taylor and Josephine Isom have said that Price and Cole are not residents of Atlantic Beach and did not follow proper procedures in declaring their candidacy and in campaigning.

Bellamy said she thinks Graham and Booker will overturn the election results so that the issue can be delayed once sent to the state Supreme Court. That is what happened in the Town Council election in 2003, which went to the courts and took 17 months to resolve, she said.

Bellamy said she thinks the goal of the two commissioners is to keep the incumbents in office for as long as possible. State law says that incumbents must stay in office until any election protests are resolved.

Bellamy said the two commissioners acted unethically when they went door-to-door and handed out notices that said absentee voters were required to be present at the challenged ballot hearing to have their vote counted when this is not required by state law. She also says Graham and Booker were inconsistent with the election commission's standards to determine whether to count challenged ballots.

"You've gone too far this time and it's time for you to go. We can't take any more of your lies or this 'make it up as you go' operation," Bellamy wrote in the letter. "This is election fraud, and it has deprived candidates of the opportunity to be on the ballot and voters of their right to vote. Your quest to predetermine the outcome of elections in this town overshadows your duties as an election commissioner."

Town Councilman Donnell Thompson said he gave a written statement to now-suspended Mayor Retha Pierce and the other Town Council members several weeks ago saying that he had doubts about the impartiality of the members of the commission. No one else seemed interested in replacing them, he said.

"It's going to be almost impossible in a four-street town to find someone that's not partial to someone else and the only way to register for that is to be proactive and reach across the table and get someone else," Thompson said.

The Town Council appoints the members of the town election commission and can remove commissioners from their posts, he said. The other three council members could not be reached for comment.

Price and Cole, who are backed by the Atlantic Beach Concerned Citizens, were declared the winners of last week's election on Thursday at a hearing held to deal with 39 challenged ballots.

The hearing tipped the election in favor of Price and Cole, who received 64 and 52 votes, respectively.

Incumbents Taylor and Isom received 43 and 35 votes, respectively. Curry, the only challenger on the ballot, received 5 votes.

The third election commissioner, Nicole Kenion, abstained from the vote to postpone the protest hearing on Saturday.

Kenion wrote a letter to the commission Friday saying she believed that only one of the three filed protests arrived by the 7 p.m. deadline Thursday. Kenion alleged that the board had not followed a consistent set of rules with the candidates.

State law says that the deadline to file protests is 48 hours after the polls close, and any protests submitted after that deadline cannot be acted upon, said Garry Baum, a spokesman for the S.C. State Election Commission.