Two recent city elections are now headed for court — one from the Nov. 7 election and one from the Dec. 5 runoff.
Losing candidates in the Ward A council race in East Point and the District 5 council race in South Fulton, both incumbents, have filed in Fulton County Superior Court, arguing that posted results are invalid.
Lance Robertson, who has held the Ward A seat in East Point since 2020, filed suit Nov. 15 against his opponent Eric Friendly, county Elections Director Nadine Williams and the Board of Registration & Elections.
In the Nov. 7 general election Friendly got 485 votes to Robertson’s 404, a margin of 81. The Ward A seat was the only one among the four East Point council seats up for a vote that didn’t require a runoff Dec. 5. Incumbents lost all four races.
But Robertson argues that “numerous” voters in East Point were assigned to the wrong ward “based on the failure to update redistricting boundary line issues,” and that the county closed some voting locations without sufficient notice.
“During early voting, numerous voters were given the wrong ballots based on Respondent Fulton County’s failure to implement the City of East Point Council approved redistricting map,” the suit says.
County election officials acknowledged at the time that some voters were initially assigned to the wrong wards, but said most of those errors were caught and not enough votes were affected to change the outcome of any races.
Robertson wants the Ward A race invalidated and re-run. Election officials declined to comment due to the pending litigation.
A recount of all races, run voluntarily by election officials after the Nov. 7 balloting, found one fewer vote for Friendly than initial totals. That recount also found some batches of early in-person votes had been left out of unofficial totals, but those appeared to be confined to Roswell races.
One race that was affected by late addition of military or provisional ballots was the District 5 council seat in South Fulton. Originally, challenger Kalvin Bennett was headed for the runoff with incumbent Corey Reeves, who held the lead. But the late additions put challenger Keoshia Bell seven votes ahead of Bennett, sending her to the runoff with Reeves instead.
On Dec. 5, Bell outpaced Reeves by an 84-vote margin out of 672 cast, according to official results.
But now that’s in dispute too: Reeves filed suit Dec. 8 against Bell, elections board chair Patrise Perkins-Hooker and the elections board, saying Bell is not qualified to be elected in South Fulton.
Runoffs had even lower turnout than the Nov. 7 election, which drew only about 10% of registered voters.
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