Both sides are now awaiting a judge’s ruling which will decide whether the nearly two-year-old election challenge between Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams and challenger Sheriel Perkins will head to trial.
Specially appointed Judge Henry Lackey heard arguments during a two-hour hearing Friday at the Leflore County Courthouse on a pair of motions filed by attorneys for McAdams asking him to toss out Perkins’ lawsuit over the 2013 mayoral election.
Lackey said he would issue a written ruling on the motions “briefly.”
Perkins, a former Democratic mayor of Greenwood, filed the lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the election, which McAdams, the independent incumbent, won by 206 votes.
During Friday’s hearing, attorneys representing McAdams asked Lackey to issue a summary judgement dismissing the case, arguing that Perkins has so far failed to produce enough evidence to cast doubt on the results of the election.
Supporters of both candidates packed opposite sides of the gallery. McAdams sat with friends and backers on the left side; Perkins sat at a table with her husband and attorney, state Rep. Willie Perkins Sr., D-Greenwood.
Nearly two years into the case, Perkins has so far turned up no evidence of fraud or irregularities except “a handful of affidavits that don’t prove anything,” said Lem Montgomery III, a Jackson attorney with the firm Bulter-Snow, who is representing McAdams.
“Our job today is to see if these are accusations only or if there is proof that support these counts,” Montgomery said.
Willie Perkins argued that evidence of fraud and illegal ballots was currently under seal inside the ballot boxes and could only be examined at trial.
“Anyone with common sense knows that’s where the proof is. We can’t get into the ballot boxes,” Perkins said.
Lackey asked Perkins if he had already had some limited amount of time to access to the boxes, Perkins replied, “We did that.” Unfortunately, he said, a fuller examination was not possible given the time constraints under state election law.
Perkins argued that attempts by McAdams’ attorneys to quash a handful of subpoenas to suspected illegal voters had hindered him in his attempts to build evidence for trial. Perkins said the subpoenas have been in limbo since Judge Samac S. Richardson considered a motion to quash the subpoenas in a telephone conference but recused himself from the case before issuing a written ruling.
Lackey, a senior-status judge from Calhoun City, was appointed to the case in January after Perkins requested that Richardson step down from the case.
Perkins also repeatedly pointed to widespread confusion at Ward 1 and Ward 2, two North Greenwood polling places where 98 percent of ballots went to McAdams. Election workers there switched the ballot books between the two precincts — located next door to each other on Claiborne Avenue — leading to chaos at the polling places before the error was corrected.
McAdams’ attorneys countered Friday that the mix-up was a technical mistake but didn’t necessarily require tossing out the ballots. Quoting from a previously filed motion, Montgomery said, “As the Mississippi Supreme Court has consistently held, mere technical violations and irregularities are generally insufficient to warrant a new election.”
Montgomery and Mark Garriga, another attorney from Butler-Snow representing McAdams, contended that Perkins’ case rested far too heavily on evidence that might be produced at trial and that Lackey’s job was now to rule on whether enough evidence currently existed in the court record to bring the case to trial.
“It boils down to this, 34 or 35 wrongfully rejected affidavit ballots,” Montgomery said Friday. “As a matter of math, the winner of the election would still be the defendant Carolyn McAdams. It would not change the outcome of the election.”
Willie Perkins argued Friday that the poll book mix-up had undermined the integrity of the election and should result in all the ballots cast before 10 a.m. at both wards — 434 votes total, by his count — being tossed out as illegal. The June 2013 contest, Perkins said, was a “clumsily run election by some election commissioners that didn’t really know what they were doing.”
Should Lackey rule that a jury should at least consider that claim, those 434 ballots — plus another 234 absentee ballots from the two wards Perkins alleged were improperly taken to the courthouse before being counted — would likely wipe out McAdams’ margin of victory.
Perkins pointed to two sworn affidavits by a pair of Democratic poll watchers in Wards 1 and 2 — Rosetta Harris and state Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville — who noted the number of ballots cast at both precincts before the error was corrected. Because of the mass confusion, Perkins argued Friday, poll workers “had nothing to verify is this was a legitimate, qualified elector.”
Attorneys for McAdams countered that both affidavits were deficient, since neither identified any individual voter or provided enough evidence to prove that any particular ballots were illegal.
Without more substantial proof of fraud or widespread irregularities, McAdams’ attorneys urged the judge to toss out the challenge.
“We’re coming up on the two year mark in this case,” Montgomery said. “It’s time to let the mayor get back to the business of running the city instead of doing this.”
• Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
