First hearing in Asbury election challenge tomorrow
Ballots in dispute are enough to change results
An initial hearing on the challenge to the Asbury Park City Council election is scheduled for tomorrow morning in front of Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Dennis O’Brien, according to the civil case management office in Freehold.
The challenge was filed by Daniel Harris III [right], an unsuccessful candidate on the A-Team slate. His petition seeks the counting of 332 vote by mail ballots and 32 provisional ballots that were disallowed by the Monmouth County Board of Elections.
The number of ballots in dispute are enough to change the election results.
The fives candidates certified as winners — Amy Quinn, John Moor and Myra Campbell of the One Asbury ticket and incumbents John Loffredo and Susan Henderson of the Forward Asbury ticket — were sworn in today.
Campbell was selected as Mayor with the support of Loffredo and Henderson. Her former running-mates Moor and Quinn voted no. Henderson was chosen as Deputy Mayor by the same 3-2 vote.
The petition filed by Harris also requests that “the correct vote count” not only be applied to him, 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 Henderson with 620 votes, Campbell with 622 and incumbent Loffredo with 654.
That puts Keady and Small within 178 votes of winning the seats now held by Campbell and Henderson. Keady, Small and Harris would need to close a 225 vote margin to win a council majority.
Tomorrow’s court date is an Order to Show Cause hearing. The judge will decide whether to grant Harris’s request for a trial. If so, a trial date will be scheduled and parameters for fact-finding before trial will be established.
If new winners are declared by court order, those winners will then be sworn in at a later date, according to Frederic Bor, an attorney representing Harris in the challenge.
The petition filed by Harris lists respondents as the Monmouth County Board of Elections, the Monmouth County Commissioner of Registration, the Monmouth County Superintendent of Elections, the Monmouth County Clerk and winning candidates Moor, Quinn, Campbell, Loffredo and Henderson.
Deputy Attorney General George Cohen is representing the Monmouth County governmental respondents, while Quinn, an attorney, is listed in court records as filing a response on her own behalf. There are no other appearances yet filed by attorneys on behalf of the other council members listed as repondents, according to records filed in the court’s civil case management office.
Click here for a prior Sun story reporting the details of Harris’s petition.
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