Fulton County Commission Chairman John Eaves says Republican lawmakers will jeopardize efforts to fix the county’s troubled elections office if they oust the leader of its oversight board this summer. Rehabilitation takes stability, he says.
Eaves said in a letter to state Rep. Lynne Riley, who leads the panel that could make a switch, that the department has a “critical need for continuity and experience.”
Registration and Elections Board Chairwoman Mary Carole Cooney, however, has only been in the seat since February. She replaced Roderick Edmond, who resigned amid controversy over the county’s botched handling of last year’s presidential election. His unexpired term is over at the end of this month.
“Ms. Cooney is an attorney experienced in public law,” Eaves told Riley, “who will be, and has already been, invaluable in dealing with the pending state investigations and the consent orders expected to result from those investigations.”
It’s another twist in a struggle for control of the state’s largest county. Eaves, a Democrat, is essentially asking GOP legislators not to wield one of the new powers they recently gave themselves over operations.
Riley said Friday that she didn’t interpret his letter that way and she will take his recommendation under advisement.
“The delegation is going to have to make that decision as a whole,” she said. “I would not rule out a single qualified candidate.”
Through statewide redistricting, north Fulton Republican legislators gained control this year over the county’s legislative delegation, the panel of all lawmakers whose districts take in a piece of the county. That meant they could craft and introduce bills altering the structure of a county government they have long criticized as bloated, unresponsive and ineffectual.
They launched a fusillade of measures, but the only one dealing with elections — one of the most glaring example of ineffectiveness — was a measure giving themselves the right to choose the chairman of the elections board, taking that right away from the Democratic-controlled County Commission.
The board has five members — Cooney, the chairwoman, and two appointees each from the county’s Republican and Democratic parties. All but one have resigned or been replaced since last year’s elections troubles.
During the July primary, hundreds of voters wound up in the wrong state House and Senate races. In the presidential election, thousands of registered voters didn’t appear on voter rolls because of slow data processing, creating long lines and causing Fulton to use more paper ballots than the entire rest of the state combined.
An independent consultant’s report pinned much of the blame on bad management by former department Director Sam Westmoreland, who resigned last year while incarcerated for failing to follow sentencing terms from two convictions on charges of driving under the influence related to prescription drugs. An investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found he had fudged parts of his resume and was assisted in the hiring process by a friend on the elections board.
A recent investigation by the AJC’s news partner, Channel 2 Action News, found the department didn’t count at least 400 ballots cast by registered voters during November’s election. Channel 2 also found a discrepancy of more than 2,000 ballots between the county’s reported final tally and a count of names on its list of voters.
Secretary of State Brian Kemp is still investigating last year’s polling troubles. The State Election Board, which regulates county elections, could ultimately decide whether to dismiss charges against the county, impose sanctions or refer cases to the Attorney General’s Office for possible prosecution.
Mary Norwood, a Republican appointee to the Fulton elections board, said another board change won’t cause problems at this point. The department has suffered from a lack of continuity with its directors, not with its oversight board members, she said.
But Stan Matarazzo, the other GOP appointee, said Cooney should stay for a two-year term. Cooney, a former deputy city attorney for Atlanta, has put in long hours working with the board’s attorney in responding to Kemp’s inquiries, he said. She also spearheaded the hiring of incoming department Director Rick Barron, who starts work later this month, he said.
The Fulton County League of Women Voters will also ask Republicans to keep Cooney, President Cecilia Houston-Torrence said.
About the Author
