Invalid signatures thwart countywide voting plans

They fought tooth and nail last week, it got heated, and now, it seems, it was pointless.

A petition to place a referendum on the November ballot to mandate the re-instituting of countywide voting, has been deemed by Supervisor of Elections Ida Cooper Elliott to lack sufficient valid signatures. As a result the ballot measure is unlikely to go before voters until at least 2012.

At an Aug. 17 public hearing, the Franklin County Voters' County-Wide Voting Political Action Committee, Inc. (FCPAC) asked county commissioners to place a binding referendum to institute countywide voting be placed on November’s ballot.

At the hearing, FCPAC, represented by Crawfordville attorney Mary Ellen Davis, presented a petition containing 852 signatures asking for the referendum. Davis insisted the commissioners present the petition to Elliot for validation.

“The statute is clear,” said Davis, over the objections of Commissioner Noah Locksley. “This is not a matter of choice. If certified you are not exempt from putting this on the ballot.”

Under countywide voting, commissioners would be required to reside within their district, but all registered county voters could participate in any district election.

On Monday morning, Elliot said she had completed the verification process on Thursday. She said FCPAC needed 784 signatures to qualify for a binding referendum, but that of the 852 signatures presented for verification, only 735 were valid. The petition was 59 signatures short.

The majority of signatures disqualified were duplicates, Elliott said, although some signers were ineligible because they were not registered voters, were felons or because the signature on the petition did not match the signature on file at the elections office.

Davis said she plans to review Elliott’s decision regarding the ineligible signatures.

FPAC paid Elliot 10 cents per signature to perform the validation. Elliott said that the petition would now be returned to the commission. She said she had advised FPAC to submit at least 1,000 signatures because there are typically problems with many of the signers.

Elliot said FCPAC can repeat the petition process but the signatures must be new, as they may reuse the signatures already collected. She said FCPAC cannot seek a referendum until the primary or general election of 2012. Davis said that if any of the countywide government entities call for a special election for another reason before then, the referendum would be eligible to be also placed on that ballot.

On Monday, Van Johnson, chairman of FCPAC, said his group will continue to campaign for at-large voting.

“We already had decided we had to clarify his (the federal judge’s) 2003 ruling so we’re going to do that,” he said. “If the judge removes his injunction, maybe the county will say this is the will of the people and institute countywide voting. Chances are we’ll have to go through this process again and we were prepared to do that.”

Johnson said Davis is now preparing questions concerning the 2003 ruling to be presented to Federal District Judge William Stafford, who issued both the original 1986 ruling and the 2003 follow-up.

Hearing marked by concern for race

Angry words were exchanged at the public hearing when FCPAC requested the issue be added to November’s ballot.

Johnson told the assembly that race is no longer an impediment to serving in public office. He said the county’s District 3 is now only 39 percent African-American, but is represented by an African-American commissioner, Noah Lockley, and that both Carrabelle and Apalachicola have elected blacks to office in city-wide elections.

“I understand the passion and I understand the past hurt but things have changed and they have changed dramatically,” Johnson said in an interview Monday. “You need to understand that. We now have an African-American president and African-Americans serving in many public offices. Maybe you have to remember where you came from to know where you are.”

Lockley led the opposition during the hearing, and at one point challenged whether Johnson, who serves as mayor of Apalachicola, was focusing on the wrong priorities. “Mr. Mayor, you need to go back up on the hill and get rid of all them coons and possums and raccoons,” he said.

“I need to get a copy of the petition,” Lockley insisted. “How many African-Americans signed it?”

“We didn’t ask what color they were,” replied Johnson.

Elliot said there was no formal way to determine the ethnicity of signers. The signatures on the petition are a matter of public record.

The Rev. Clifford Williams, one of the plaintiffs in the 1986 case that established single-member districts, accused FCPAC of tricking people into signing a document they did not understand. “Some African-Americans have spoken to me and said they did not know what they were signing and they were brainwashed by the mayor,” he said.

Lockley protested that county money should not be spent to determine the legality of countywide voting. “They need to pay for their own attorney,” he said.

Rose McCoy, the first black woman to hold public office in Franklin County, also spoke long and eloquently against at-large voting.

Commissioner Pinki Jackel said it was past time to end the controversy. “I’m going to ask for board support to seek an outside attorney with expertise in voting in civil rights,” she said. “We have as yet received no outside opinion.”

County Attorney Michael Shuler said “I will look at her arguments and act” but Jackel registered objections.

 “I would rather go through an outside attorney because there’s a general feeling across the county that the county attorney is opposed to countywide voting,” she said. “I want an unbiased opinion.”

Jackel also disagreed with Lockley that the county should not pay to go back to federal court. “We can’t discriminate on issues,” she said. “That’s what the legal fund is for.”

Commissioner Cheryl Sanders asked if the county could get an opinion from the Florida attorney general without hiring an outside lawyer. Shuler said that only Stafford or someone equivalent could change the court order.

“We need to go straight to the judge and let him render his opinion,” said Chairman Smokey Parrish.

In the end, the commission voted 4-1 to have Elliot review the petition, with Lockley opposed. Jackel’s motion to seek advice from an outside attorney died for lack of a second.

Disagreement over federal judge’s views on ruling

The argument over voting dates back to the creation of a single district voting system in Franklin County.

In his May 31, 1986 ruling, in an opinion arrived at in a suit against the county by a group of African-American citizens, Stafford agreed that discrimination in voting patterns had made it unlikely a black man or woman could get elected countywide.

“The at-large system for the election of the Franklin County commission has effectively denied to the black citizens of Franklin County an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect candidates of their own choice in violation of their rights,” Stafford wrote.

In Nov. 2006, a nonbinding referendum to return to at large elections passed by a vote of 2,633 to 1,191. Afterwards, the commission voted 4 to 1, with Russell Crofton dissenting, to continue voting by district.

At the time, Shuler said that the county remained under court order and could not return to at-large voting. Members of Concerned Citizens of Franklin County, the group that sponsored the 2006 referendum, argued that Stafford had removed the injunction when he allowed revision of voting districts in Dec. 2003.

Cora Russ and Dolores Roux, both of Apalachicola, also serve on the FCPAC board, along with Ken Osborne, of Alligator Point.

Davis, who specializes in employment law, clerked for Tommy Thomas Warren, of Tallahassee, during Haynes vs. Shoneys, the largest class action lawsuit for race discrimination ever filed in federal court. The plaintiffs sought more than half-billion dollars in back pay and punitive damages, in addition to a court-ordered affirmative action plan, to counteract claims of years of racially discriminatory company policy. They ultimately won over $32 million.