Local & State Headlines

'Convenience voting' halted

• For years, Calhoun County voters were allowd to pick where they voted, an investigation by the secretary of state's office reveals.

Susan McCord

MORGAN — Practices of “convenience voting” in Calhoun County and improper ballot assistance in Americus were ordered to stop and deemed worthy of criminal sanctions after hearings on the two complaints were held earlier this week.

Voters from one Calhoun County precinct, “Morgan,” had been allowed “for years” to pick from one of three polling places during county, state and national elections, an investigator with the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office of Inspector General said in an investigative summary released Thursday.

Voters in another Calhoun precinct, called “Edison-Arlington Precinct” were permitted to vote “at the nearest polling place” because the elections superintendent had determined that no suitable facility existed within the geographic boundaries of the precinct, the May 2007 report said.

Precinct cards specified “Nearest Edison or Arlington” to voters in the precinct, and named “MLK Drive, Edison, Ga. 39846,” as the address, though the Edison polling place had been located at 460 Turner St., the old Edison City Hall, for years, it said.

When the state elections division discovered the practice of “convenience voting” in Calhoun County, Elections Superintendent Annie Doris Holder was instructed to require voters in each precinct to vote in just one place. Holder, just before the July 2006 General Primary, told Morgan voters to vote only in Morgan, and Edison-Arlington voters to cast ballots only at the old Edison City Hall.

Holder said she was working with precincts and polling places established long before she took office as probate judge and chief magistrate, in 2001.

“As soon as they called me and said the irregularity was there I did everything in my power to get the message out,” Holder said Thursday.

A radio and television ad campaign, plus transportation provided for voters who appeared at the wrong place attempted to ensure the replacement of “convenience” with a fixed polling place was clear, Holder said.

Meanwhile, learning of the changes, the Calhoun County Board of Registrars, who also are named in the Secretary of State’s complaint “failed to issue new precinct cards to the voters,” the report said.

Acting on the Inspector General’s recommendations Monday, the State Elections Board voted 4-1 to issue a formal cease and desist order against Holder and Chief Registrar Calvin Harp, and refer the case to the Georgia Attorney General for further action, including corrective instructions and sanctions for violating several Georgia laws.

Dawson attorney Ed Collier, who represented the county of 2,735 registered voters at the hearing, said the county was receptive to any order because Calhoun has since abandoned “convenience voting.”

The convenience of electronic voting now implemented across Georgia led some in Calhoun to wonder what they’d been doing wrong, Collier said.

When Holder took office, succeeding long-time Probate and Magistrate Judge Charles Porter, “she had no reason to believe that anything she did was wrong,” he said, but once she did, Holder reported the situation to Secretary of State Karen Handel’s office, Collier said.

The investigation into former Americus mayoral candidate James Bryant’s alleged 2005 “assistance” to elderly absentee voters was further along Monday, and the state elections board, attorney general’s office and Bryant agreed to a formal consent order, reprimand and the imposition of a $600 fine against Bryant.

Details of the decision will be made public when the order is signed by the secretary of state, said Matt Carrothers, spokesman for the secretary of state’s office.

Bryant, who challenged Mayor Barry Blount for the mayor’s seat in 2005, initially denied allegations made that year that he “improperly assisted six elderly voters with their ballots,” minutes from the Monday board meeting said.

After the case was heard by an administrative law judge in the Office of State Administrative Hearings, Bryant “then admitted to the conduct and wanted to resolve the case,” accepting Monday a consent order that includes a cease and desist order, a reprimand and a $600 fine, the minutes said.

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