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DEL.ICIO.USElection official expects McKinney to protest to feds
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A top election official in DeKalb County said Wednesday morning that she expects U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney to take her complaints about alleged voting irregularities in Tuesday’s election straight to Washington — just like she did when she lost four years ago.
“I guess I could be real optimistic and say when she wakes up today she’ll feel a lot different about this and she’ll just bow down gracefully,” said Linda Lattimore, DeKalb’s director of voter registration and elections. “But I’m not dreaming this morning. I’m just ready for whatever happens.”
McKinney lost Tuesday’s Democratic runoff election to former DeKalb County Commissioner Hank Johnson by a sizable margin. She complained throughout the day through her attorneys and on her web site of voting irregularities that ranged from her name not appearing on ballots to malfunctioning machines that prevented supporters from recording a vote for her.
McKinney at this point has not filed a formal complaint, and she could not be reached for comment.
A campaign volunteer who was answering the phone in McKinney’s headquarters Wednesday morning talked vaguely about voting irregularities in yesterday’s runoff and said she plans to fill out an affidavit with a lawyer. The woman, who would only give her first name Dana, called the election a “lie.”
“I’m a voter and I know what happened to me,” she said, without offering specifics. “This was predetermined. Everybody knew what was going to happen. We got bomb threats up here – we got all types of threats.”
She added the state’s electronic voting machines “are not valid.”
“The people of Georgia’s voice was not heard yesterday,” she said before walking away.
One of McKinney’s options would be to file the complaint in DeKalb, because that is where she lives.
Lattimore said local election officials investigated the campaign’s claims.
“We called all the polls right when she complained to get documentation,” Lattimore said. She said she found no evidence of any irregularities.
Kara Sinkule, spokesman for Secretary of State Cathy Cox, said McKinney can request a recount under Georgia law “when it appears that a discrepancy or error, although not apparent on the face of the returns, has been made.” This is the only recount provison McKinney can rely on becasue the vote outcome was not numerically close enough to qualiify under the 1 percent recount rule, Sinkule said.
McKinney conceded the election early Wednesday but did not indicate she would support the 51-year-old Johnson in the November race against Republican Catherine Davis. The majority of the 4th Congressional District lies in DeKalb but the district includes parts of Rockdale and Gwinnett counties.
Lattimore said McKinney can file a formal complaint with DeKalb County or the Secretary of State’s Office, but will most likely contact the U.S. Justice Department, as she did in 2002 when she lost to Democrat Denise Majette.
In 2002, McKinney alleged that some black voters were denied the right to vote because their precincts were intentionally overcrowded, Lattimore said.
“It was a bad situation that went from bad to worse,” she said. “We had the police out there, all my board members out there.”
The Justice Department had investigators come to the county and take depositions from various election officials, but they found no irregularities, Lattimore said.
“We probably provided them 10 oak trees worth of paper of everything we had here,” she said. ” They [the McKinney campaign] wants to accuse us of stuff they don’t have any proof of or that can’t be proved.”
Jeremy Redmon contributed to this report.
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