Richard Lankford’s bid to retake the Fulton County Sheriff’s seat came to an abrupt end Wednesday, and with it a court case that might have shed light on systemic problems within the county’s elections department.
Lankford sought a runoff against current Sheriff Ted Jackson in December, but Superior Court Senior Judge G. Grant Brantley threw out his lawsuit against the Board of Registration and Elections on a technicality. Lankford’s lead attorney, Mark Spix, didn’t serve notice of the challenge to Secretary of State Brian Kemp in his capacity as State Election Board chairman, as required by state law.
Had the case proceeded, his attorneys planned to delve into the inner workings of a July primary election fraught with problems, which would be pertinent to the upcoming presidential election.
Fulton’s elections department is approaching November under close scrutiny after botching the redistricting process, causing hundreds of voters to be assigned to the wrong state House and Senate races in July. The embattled former director, Sam Westmoreland, resigned last month after landing in jail for a probation violation involving a prescription drugs-related DUI arrest in 2009.
Lankford, who lost the sheriff’s seat more than two decades ago after becoming a target in an FBI extortion case, requested a recount after losing to Jackson in July. The recount confirmed Jackson beat him and three other challengers with 50.05 percent of the vote — enough to avoid a runoff.
But Lankford disputed the methodology.
There were enough irregularities, he contended, to call his narrow loss into question. He and his attorneys planned to cite sloppy record keeping, including precinct memory cards not accounted for and gaps in chain-of-custody paperwork for both memory cards and voting machines.
“This was one of the most poorly run elections in the history of Fulton County,” Lankford said. “It’s a leaky system that’s neither tamper proof nor error free.”
Elections board attorney A. Lee Parks said the supposed discrepancies could have been explained had Lankford or his attorneys gone through records at the elections office or taken depositions.
“It’s truly garbage,” Parks said of Lankford’s allegations.
He questioned why Lankford is still pursuing the sheriff’s office, since after his 1990 conviction of income tax evasion and extortion was overturned on appeal, he avoided a retrial by cutting a deal with the U.S. attorney not to work in law enforcement again.
Lankford called the agreement illegal and unenforceable. He also ran unsuccessfully for sheriff in 1996.
The former sheriff said he has asked the U.S. Justice Department for an investigation of the primary. He said he’s considering appealing Brantley’s ruling, but money is running low.
His team of attorneys, who were working pro bono, included Bob Barr, the former U.S. Attorney who prosecuted Lankford. Barr said that was a long time ago, and he’s more concerned now with discrepancies in Fulton’s elections system.
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