Latest news with #electioninterference
Yahoo
7 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Georgia mayor and two others jailed for trying to halt local election
CAMILLA, Ga. (WSAV) — The mayor of Camilla, Ga., and two former election officials have been jailed on felony charges stemming from efforts last November to halt a local election after one of the mayor's allies, Venterra Pollard, was disqualified from a city council race. Mayor Kelvin Owens was held at the Mitchell County jail Friday, two days after a grand jury indicted him on a felony charge of election interference and a misdemeanor count of conspiring to commit election fraud. Camilla, a farming community of about 5,000 people, is about 225 miles from Savannah. The city's former elections superintendent and her former deputy superintendent were also jailed. Rhunette Williford and Cheryl Ford were charged with the same crimes as the mayor, plus misdemeanor counts of failing to perform their duties as public officers. Mayor Owens had blamed the local upheaval on racial politics, saying that Pollard, who is Black, was targeted by white residents trying to wrest power from the majority Black population. The city of Camilla is nearly three-fourths Black. All three defendants remained in jail awaiting a hearing Monday. District Attorney Joe Mulholland, whose circuit includes Camilla, declined to comment on the indictment Friday. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press
30-05-2025
- General
- Associated Press
Georgia mayor and 2 others are jailed on felony charges for trying to halt a local election
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The mayor of a small city in Georgia and two former election officials have been jailed on felony charges stemming from efforts last November to halt a local election after one of the mayor's allies was disqualified from a city council race. Camilla Mayor Kelvin Owens was being held at the Mitchell County jail Friday, two days after a grand jury indicted him on a felony charge of election interference and a misdemeanor count of conspiring to commit election fraud. Also jailed were the city's former elections superintendent, Rhunette Williford; and her former deputy superintendent, Cheryl Ford, who is currently Camilla's city clerk. They were charged with the same crimes as the mayor, plus misdemeanor counts of failing to perform their duties as public officers. Chaos roiled special elections for a pair of city council seats in Camilla last November amid a long-running legal battle over local politics in the town, a farming community of about 5,000 people in rural southwest Georgia. The case revolved around Venterra Pollard, a city council member removed from office last summer after a judge ruled he wasn't a Camilla resident. Pollard ran to regain the position in the fall special election. Another judge ordered Pollard disqualified and ruled that votes for him should be discarded. In addition, the city was ordered to post signs saying votes for Pollard wouldn't be counted. On Nov. 4, the day before Election Day, both Williford and Ford quit as the city's two top elections officials. Their joint resignation letter blamed 'mental duress, stress and coercion experienced by recent court decisions regarding our role in elections.' Owens, citing his emergency powers as mayor, moved swiftly to halt the city's elections. Signs posted at City Hall and a notice on Facebook declared the election was canceled. Polling places were closed to both poll workers and voters in the morning. The elections were held, albeit several hours behind schedule, after Superior Court Judge Heather Lanier appointed new supervisors to oversee the voting and ordered polls to remain open until nearly 4 a.m. Elections for president, Congress and other offices weren't affected. Mayor Owens had blamed the local upheaval on racial politics, saying that Pollard, who is Black, was targeted by white residents trying to wrest power from the majority Black population. The city of Camilla is nearly three-fourths Black. The Georgia NAACP said in a statement on Facebook that it was 'deeply alarmed' by the allegations of election interference as well as the arrests of Owens and the two former election officials, all of whom are Black. 'We were shocked that there were indictments,' said Gerald Griggs, president of the Georgia NAACP. 'We are still in a fact-finding mode to see what actually happened.' All three defendants remained in jail awaiting a hearing Monday. It was not immediately known if any of them had attorneys who could speak for them. Messages seeking comment were left at two phone numbers for Owens. The Associated Press could not find working phone numbers for Williford or Ford. District Attorney Joe Mulholland, whose circuit includes Camilla, declined to comment on the indictment Friday.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Camilla mayor arrested, charged with election interference
CAMILLA – Three city of Camilla officials, including Mayor Kelvin Owens, Election Superintendent Rhunette Williford and City Clerk Cheryl Ford, were arrested on Wednesday on election interference and other charges, the same day a Mitchell County Grand Jury returned an indictment against them. The Grand Jury handed down the 13-count indictment on Wednesday in relation to a November special election for an unexpired Camilla City Council seat that was ultimately won by council member Azalee Vereen. The arrests follow a lengthy legal case over two former city council members who were ruled ineligible to serve because they could not prove they were residents of Camilla. No bond hearing had been held in the case as of Thursday afternoon, and all three suspects remained at the Mitchell County Jail as of noon. The November election was a memorable one for residents as it saw polls remain open until 4 a.m. on Nov. 5. The special election initially was cancelled following the resignations of Ford and Williford on the previous day, leaving no one to open the polling place in downtown Camilla. However, a judge appointed new election workers on Election Day, and the polls opened shortly before 4 p.m., remaining open for the required 12 hours. The Nov. 4 general election was held separately from the city special election and was unaffected by the snafu with the city. In the first count of the indictment, Owens is charged with interference with elections. The mayor is accused of 'willfully (attempting) to prevent a poll officer from holding an election' by instructing the city's police chief to post officers outside the polling place to prevent poll officers and voters from entering the building, according to the indictment. Owens also is charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud. In those indictments, he is accused of conspiring with Ford and Williford. In furthering this conspiracy, the indictment said, Owens canceled the election during a Nov. 4 meeting, instructed employees to remove election signage indicating where polls were located and personally placed a sign at the polling place announcing the cancellation. Ford was indicted on three counts of interference with elections, conspiracy to commit election fraud and two counts of failure of a public officer to perform their duty. She is accused of resigning her position the day prior to the election in order to prevent voting from occurring, attempting to prevent a poll officer from holding an election and of failing to post signage stating that any ballots cast for Ventarra Pollard would not be counted due to his ineligibility to run for office in the city. Pollard, along with former council member Corey Morgan, were initially ruled ineligible to run for office in July 2023 by a senior Superior Court judge from outside the South Georgia Judicial Circuit, a decision that was upheld in 2024 by the Georgia Court of Appeals. Williford was indicted on two counts of interference with elections, conspiracy to commit election fraud and failure of a public officer to perform her duties. She is accused of resigning her position the day prior to the election in order to prevent poll workers and voters from entering the polling place and in furtherance of the conspiracy to prevent the election from proceeding as scheduled. The investigation was initiated at the request of South Georgia Judicial Circuit Judge Joseph Mulhollaind on Dec. 2, 2024, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced in a press release on Thursday. The agency presented its investigative findings to Mulholland's office prior to the district attorney's presentation of the case to the Grand Jury. During a previous interview with The Albany Herald, Owens said that he, Pollard and Morgan, along with council member Raimond Burley, represented the city's 'first progressive black voting block' and that this had upset some within the city. Two Camilla residents filed a lawsuit in November 2022 challenging the residency of Pollard and Morgan.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Illegitimate election claims fly as legislative meeting mulls changes to Utah's signature verification
SALT LAKE CITY () — A meeting of the Utah legislature's Rules Review and General Oversight Committee rehashed allegations related to the 2024 Primary Election Thursday where supporters of Phil Lyman, who lost to Governor Spencer Cox, repeated claims that Cox did not gather enough signatures, that the Cox campaign 'induced' candidates to run against Lyman, there was election interference by the media, and malfeasance by the Davis County Clerk and the Lt. Governor's office in verifying those signatures. The conversation was largely dominated by the committee's chair, Sen. Dan McCay (R-Riverton), Davis County Clerk Brian McKenzie, and the Lt. Governor's Director of Elections Ryan Cowley, who McCay pushed to consider several changes to signature verifying processes to avoid future issues. 'I feel like we have let the public down on this issue. I feel like it leaves this asterisk [around the election,]' McCay said. After reviewing the , (which found there were some errors in verifying signatures, but that Cox still qualified), McCay gave floor time to Lyman's running mate Natalie Clawson and a citizen named Michael Clara recruited by Lyman to help with public records requests. Clawson and Clara presented what they claimed was evidence of 'missing signatures' and evidence that the Lt. Governor and McKenzie tried to cover their tracks. Clara is basing his theory on the fact that there were signature packets identified by Davis County as irregular and sent off to be investigated. As per policy, the office sends those signatures to the Lieutenant Governor's office, which has the authority to ask for the signatures to be investigated by the Attorney General's office. Those signatures were investigated, and over those irregular packets. Clara argued that the signatures should have been sent to the Attorney General directly, not to the Lieutenant Governor — who was a candidate on the ballot at the time. Sale of Utah's public lands dropped from 'big beautiful bill' 'In my estimation, what I can see through GRAMA request, we're probably missing 2,000 signatures for Governor Cox that are unaccounted for,' Clara said, but he did not show the GRAMA request that told him that. He further alleged, without showing any evidence, that the LG's office then gave those flagged packets back to the Davis County Clerk once they realized Cox may be short on his signatures. McKenzie was emphatic that did not happen. 'Flagged petitions that were considered for fraud investigation were never delivered to the LG's office and then returned to my office,' McKenzie said. 'I don't know where that data comes from. It's false.' Clawson made allegations that the Lieutenant Governor didn't fully recuse herself during the election because there was only one text message returned by GRAMA request between Greg Bell, who was the independent election officer tasked with the job, and LG Deidre Henderson during the cycle. She further claimed that nomination packets were hidden from Clara and their campaign when others were given access, that there was election interference by the media, and rehashed allegations that someone in the Cox campaign 'enticed' fellow write-in candidates Richard and Carol Lyman to run against Phil Lyman. Further, she questioned the results of the Primary and called for a 'special election,' claiming they weren't allowed to view sensitive election returns called Cast Vote Records. Courts have protected those records in Utah because they can be used to triangulate how someone voted. She also claimed that election staff in Davis County didn't take required signature verification training and that 'conveniently placed' holes in the ballot envelopes showed whether people were writing Lyman. 'I appreciate the scope of the legislative audit [of the nominating signatures], I think it would be appropriate to expand it to the primary elections because of all this interference that we saw,' Clawson said before saying the 'only fair outcome' would be a special election if the committee finds what Clawson purports to have found. McKenzie shot down all of her claims. 'Cast Vote Record, the board of canvassers can access that data,' he said. Incumbent Robert Axson wins Republican Party Chair at 2025 convention As for the holes in the envelopes, McKenzie explained it gives clerks a quick and easy way to look through a stack and see if they've separated the ballot from the envelope. 'The placement of that hole varies depending on the vendor and some regulations with the Postal Service,' McKenzie said. 'There was no preplanning or placement of that hole.' Finally, McKenzie explained that every member of his staff did do a required signature verification training but that some workers took a 2023 training and were verifying signatures before a new version of 2024 training was required. The meeting wrapped without any action taken by the committee, but rather a lengthy discussion where McCay aired several of his questions and grievances for McKenzie and Cowley about how they would smooth over these issues. The following are some of the considerations: Candidates submitting packets in real time instead of having all the signatures verified at once — allowing candidates time to figure out whether they need to gather more. Oversubmitting packets — allowing candidates to submit more signatures than they need, and not having clerks stop verifying once a candidate has reached the required threshold. Adding signature gathering licensing and required training for signature gathering employees How to handle perceived conflicts of interest Blind verification of signature packets so gatherers don't know who they're collecting for Having vendors move the holes on ballot envelopes so as not to reveal any information Decentralizing signature reviews so counties are validating packets instead of the LG's office. Transparency — how to make Cast Vote Records tailored so no one can triangulate how someone voted, but results can be checked. Making cure lists public McCay also chastised McKenzie and Cowley over their handling of the 'enticement' allegation in the Phil Lyman race. 'I tend to believe that someone was being it stopped being cute after one candidate had to spend a bunch more money (to fix his political signs),' McCay said. 'There's enough smoke here,' McCay said, pushing the pair about their investigation process. 'We did have those conversations internally,' Cowley said, arguing that the allegation was given to the right authorities and pointing out that Lyman also sued the other two Lymans, which could be seen as trying to force them out of the race. 'I feel terribly that our processes have let us down,' McCay said. Illegitimate election claims fly as legislative meeting mulls changes to Utah's signature verification Discover a World of Color Happiness! at Disneyland's 70th celebration Intermountain offers in-office hand procedures for convenience and lower cost 'Special moment:' Trooper jumps in to help after baby born in car on Utah highway Backed into your garage door? A+ Garage Doors fixes it fast Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Forbes
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Cuomo Blasts Reported DOJ Probe Against Him, Calls It Election Interference
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running in this year's New York City mayoral race, accused President Donald Trump's administration of engaging in election interference, following reports that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the New York Times, which first reported on the matter, the U.S. attorney's office in Washington opened an investigation into his testimony he gave to Congress about his handling of the pandemic, where several GOP lawmakers have accused him of lying. In a statement shared with multiple outlets, a spokesperson for Cuomo said: 'This is lawfare and election interference plain and simple — something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against.' The spokesperson said Cuomo's team has not been informed about the investigation and asked why someone would 'leak it now,' implying that it was being done to impact the New York Mayoral race. He then added that the former governor ' testified truthfully to the best of his recollection about events from four years earlier, and he offered to address any follow-up questions from the subcommittee.' A Marist poll of the Democratic Mayoral Primary released last week showed Cuomo leading by a significant margin. A former key aide for Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa, tweeted about the reported probe, saying: 'Trump wants a mayor who will bend the knee (or be up his butt)…Andrew Cuomo is his nightmare come true…enter law-fare…and a galvanized democratic base.' 74%. That is the percentage of New York City Democratic primary voters who want a candidate who 'will try to oppose President Donald Trump as much as possible,' according to the Marist Poll.
