Attorney: Challenge won’t delay Council swearing in
If results change, winners declared by court order would later take office
A legal challenge to the city council election results in Asbury Park should not change the timing of the July 1 swearing in of the new council, according to the attorney handling the case.
“There is no connection with the swearing in because it would be virtually impossible in most elections to conduct an election contest,” said attorney Fredric Bor, in reference to the normally short amount of time between an election and the date the winners take office.
Official results certified by the Monmouth County Board of Elections declared John Moor, Amy Quinn, Myra Campbell, John Loffredo and Susan Henderson as the winners in the council race.
“They’re the presumptive winners,” said Bor. “If other winners are later declared by court order, they’d be sworn in at a later date.”
Bor represents Daniel Harris III [above right], an unsuccessful candidate on the A-Team slate, who filed a petition on Tuesday challenging the election — in particular the voiding of 332 vote by mail [VBM] ballots and the failure to count 32 provisional ballots by the Monmouth County Board of Elections.
If counted, the ballots contested are enough to change the election results.
Harris’s petition seeks a trial to determine whether those votes should be counted. A judge has yet to be assigned to the case, and the next step is a hearing to decide on scheduling a trial, and the parameters of preliminary fact-gathering, Bor said.
Bor was willing to discuss procedural issues about the case, but he declined comment on the substantive issues involved in the lawsuit.
The suit also alleges that the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, in a search of the A-Team headquarters before the election, removed 115 applications for VBM ballots and failed to turn them over to the “appropriate location” so those voters would receive ballots. The suit alleges that those voters never received VBM ballots and were disenfranchised.
A spokesman for the Prosecutor’s Office had previously told the Sun the office would not comment on a pending investigation, nor would it confirm or deny an investigation relating to the A-Team. The Sun is awaiting a response from the Prosecutor’s office in regard to the allegations in Harris’s petition.
The petition also requests that “the correct vote count” not only be applied to Harris, but also to his A-Team running mates Duanne Small, Jim Keady, Nora Hyland and Remond Palmer.
On the A-Team, the three highest vote getters were Keady with 447 votes, Small with 444 and Harris with 430. The three lowest winning candidates were incumbent Henderson with 620 votes, Campbell with 622 and incumbent Loffredo with 654.
That puts Keady and Small within 178 votes of winning two seats. Keady, Small and Harris would need to close a 225 vote margin to win a council majority.
The two other winners were Moor with 723 votes and Quinn with 716. Ousted incumbent Kevin Sanders remains in sixth place with 596 votes. Loffredo, Henderson and Sanders ran together on the Forward Asbury ticket. Moor, Quinn and Campbell ran on the One Asbury ticket.
Harris’s petition states that 230 of the 332 voided VBM ballots were rejected for reasons relating to disclosing who provided assistance on the application for the ballot. The petition challenges the statute cited for the voiding of 207 of those ballots as “not a legal justification for voiding a VBM ballot.”
The petition further challenges the voiding of these 230 ballots because the board did not disclose what “caused it to believe the voter had been assisted.”
The Petition also contests 19 VBM ballots that were voided for issues relating to the validity of signatures. In addition, the petition alleges that 47 VBM ballots voided on election day were not among the voided ballots listed in a subsequent Open Public Meeting Act request listing VBM ballots not counted.
Another ground for challenging the voiding of the 332 uncounted VBM ballots is that the “date, time and location of the counting of the VBM Ballots is not known and was not observable to the public,” the petition alleged.
In addition, Harris’s petition alleges that some voters received their VBM ballots after the election, citing as an example voter Ronald Davis, 66, who had requested a messenger to file a VBM application on his behalf. The petition alleges the postmark on the VBM ballot sent to David was dated two days after the election.
The use of ballot messengers by the A-Team has been controversial in the campaign. A voter may designate a messenger to pick up a VBM ballot at the election offices in Freehold and bring it to the voter. Such a messenger designation is made by the voter on the VBM ballot application.
The voter can then return the completed ballot by mail, or by designating the messenger or another person to take it back to Freehold for tabulation. A messenger may handle no more than 10 ballots.
Before the election, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office executed a search warrant at the A-Team headquarters in connection with an investigation of the messenger ballots. Keady previously told the Sun that the A-Team is fully cooperating with the investigation.
————————————————————
Follow the Asbury Park Sun on Facebook and Twitter.
