Anjuan Brown says the only thing he’s guilty of in his race for District 3 supervisor is campaigning from sunup to sundown.
“I talked to the people of District 3 about their concerns and issues. We talked about how we can improve District 3 and Leflore County together. They expressed that they’re tired of broken promises and being used every four years but always receive the same,” he said in a prepared statement.
What Brown didn’t do, he said, is commit fraud, as Preston Ratliff has alleged.
Ratliff, a one-term incumbent, lost to Brown 607-518 in the Democratic primary. Ratliff had led by more than 40 votes following the Aug. 2 machine count, but Brown passed him thanks to a 4-to-1 advantage in the more than 250 absentee ballots cast.
Ratliff has appealed the Leflore County Democratic Executive Committee’s certification of Brown as the winner, alleging that fraud and other problems involving absentee ballots cost him the nomination.
Among Ratliff’s allegations are that Brown and his supporters encouraged 152 absentee voters to cast illegal absentee ballots by falsely checking on their application that they would be out of town. That is one of the reasons allowed to vote absentee along with being older than 65, disabled or in the military.
Two factions within the Leflore County Democratic Executive Committee have called separate meetings to consider Ratliff’s challenge. One is set to meet at 8 a.m. Wednesday and the other at 9 a.m.
A chancery court hearing is also scheduled for Thursday to consider an injunction Ratliff requested to stop an earlier planned meeting of the committee, which Chancellor Catherine Farris-Carter prevented from happening this week.
The ultimate winner of the Democratic primary will face independent Charles McCain Jr. in the Nov. 8 general election.
Brown said he normally doesn’t respond to allegations but being accused of fraud is too much.
“Neither me nor anyone helping me knowingly committed any type of fraud or any other illegal acts,” he said.
Brown said if Ratliff had spent time campaigning instead of trying to find fault in the process, then Brown would probably have had a harder time receiving more than 600 votes.
Brown said he’s received about 30 to 35 calls from voters complaining about people coming to their homes and jobs harassing them about why they voted absentee and who they voted for, among other things.
Brown compared the situation to stories his great-grandmother told him about voting in South Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s, an era in which blacks were routinely barred or intimidated from voting.
She told him she received visits and threats before and after voting, he said. People would tell her that her lights would be cut off, that she did something wrong and would be investigated and that a factory was going to stop taking her cucumbers, which were her main source of income, Brown said.
His great-grandmother stood firm and wasn’t intimated, though, he said. He said he won’t be either.
“I thought that I would never see those days until I received several calls from voters in District 3. Does this mean that we are headed back? But this time people that (are) doing the visiting looks like and talks like the voters,” Brown, who is black, said in his statement. “I say to you District 3 voters stand strong. You only exercised your rights.”
Ratliff declined comment this morning on the allegations of voter intimidation.
“I’m not going to speak on it. I’m just going to let it work its way out in our meeting next week,” he said.
• Contact Charlie Smith at csmith@gwcommonwealth.com.
