The mayor of a small metropolis in Georgia and two former election officers have been jailed on felony costs stemming from efforts final November to halt a neighborhood election after one of many mayor’s allies was disqualified from a metropolis council race.
Camilla Mayor Kelvin Owens was being held on the Mitchell County jail Friday, two days after a grand jury indicted him on a felony cost of election interference and a misdemeanor rely of conspiring to commit election fraud.
Additionally jailed had been the town’s former elections superintendent, Rhunette Williford; and her former deputy superintendent, Cheryl Ford, who’s presently Camilla’s metropolis clerk.
They had been charged with the identical crimes because the mayor, plus misdemeanor counts of failing to carry out their duties as public officers.
Chaos roiled particular elections for a pair of metropolis council seats in Camilla final November amid a long-running authorized battle over native politics within the city, a farming group of about 5,000 folks in rural southwest Georgia.
The case revolved round Venterra Pollard, a metropolis council member faraway from workplace final summer season after a decide dominated he wasn’t a Camilla resident.
Pollard ran to regain the place within the fall particular election.
One other decide ordered Pollard disqualified and dominated that votes for him needs to be discarded. As well as, the town was ordered to submit indicators saying votes for Pollard wouldn’t be counted.
On Nov. 4, the day earlier than Election Day, each Williford and Ford give up as the town’s two high elections officers.
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 town’s elections.
Indicators posted at Metropolis Corridor and a discover on Fb declared the election was canceled.
Polling locations had been closed to each ballot employees and voters within the morning.
The elections had been held, albeit a number of hours not on time, after Superior Court docket Choose Heather Lanier appointed new supervisors to supervise the voting and ordered polls to stay open till practically 4 a.m. Elections for president, Congress and different places of work weren’t affected.
Mayor Owens had blamed the native upheaval on racial politics, saying that Pollard, who’s Black, was focused by white residents attempting to wrest energy from the bulk Black inhabitants.
Town of Camilla is almost three-fourths Black.
The Georgia NAACP mentioned in an announcement on Fb that it was “deeply alarmed” by the allegations of election interference in addition to the arrests of Owens and the 2 former election officers, all of whom are Black.
“We were shocked that there were indictments,” mentioned 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 listening to Monday.
It was not instantly recognized if any of them had attorneys who may converse for them. Messages searching for remark had been left at two telephone numbers for Owens.
The Related Press couldn’t discover working telephone numbers for Williford or Ford.
District Lawyer Joe Mulholland, whose circuit consists of Camilla, declined to touch upon the indictment Friday.
