Suzannah Heimel, who is running for Post 1 on the Board of Commissioners in November, has filed suit in Oconee County Superior Court asking the Court to force the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration to stop registering voters.
Heimel said she wants to block registration of voters until the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration holds hearings on 228 voters whose registration was challenged in July.
The Board of Elections and Registration, at its Aug. 6 meeting, reviewed two lists of registered voters challenged by Victoria Cruz. The first list was of 31 Oconee County registered voters, and the second was of 197 Oconee County voters.
The Board dismissed the challenges of all but two of the names on the first list and of all of the challenges on the second list due to a lack of probable cause.
After holding a hearing on Aug. 15 on the two voters from the first list of 31 submitted by Cruz, the Board voted to remove both names from the list.
Cruz subsequently submitted challenges to the registration of another 30 voters, and the Board at its meeting on Sept. 4 agreed to move forward with that challenge.
Heimel, in her suit seeking a writ of mandamus to force the Board to hold a hearing on the full 228 names on the first two lists, said the Board was failing “to fulfill your duties” as specified under Georgia code.
Heimel filed a subsequent motion on Sept. 12 asking the Court for an emergency injunction to declare the actions taken by the Board on Aug. 6 to be “null and void.”
Contention of Suit
Heimel filed her suit on Sept. 4, the same day as the most recent meeting of the Board of Elections and Registration. The Board went into executive session at the end of that meeting to discuss the litigation.
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| Board Voting To Remove Two Voters From List 8/15/2024 Assistant Director Jennifer Stone, Gregg, Hanley, Shook, Davis and Mitchell (L-R) |
Heimel’s two-page document, an undated memo, is labeled “Cease and Desist Order” and has “Writ of Mandamus” hand-written above it.
The memo is directed at Sharon Gregg, Director of the Board of Elections and Registration for Oconee County, with copies directed to Oconee County Attorney Daniel Haygood and Jay Hanley, Chair of the Board of Elections and Registration.
The memo says it is a “notice to cease and desist registering voters until the Board conducts the required hearings for the challenged voters they received notice of July 19, 2024.”
The document states that “This cease and desist letter is aimed to serve notice for you to stop your persistent actions towards me, an Oconee County voter that are related, but not limited to:
“1. Continuing to register new voters while not conducting hearings for the 228 challenged voters you were made aware of July 19, 2024.”
“2. Failure to fulfill your duties to remove dead and ineligible voters.”
“3. Failure to fulfill you duties to confirm eligibility of voters.”
Georgia code is listed with each of the three items.
Assignment Of Case
Heimel states in the document that she approached Thomas Mitchell, serving as county attorney in the absence of Haygood, at the end of the meeting on Aug. 15 and informed him “about this violation.”
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| Heimel Approaching Mitchell 8/15/2024 |
“I also sent an email to Daniel Haygood asking for a remedy to this procedural violation,” she continued. “I did not get a response and no hearings were scheduled for the challenged electors.”
Heimel said the Board’s “conduct is a threat to the registered voters of Oconee County. It prevents me from having confidence in the election rolls.”
“If you do not comply I will be forced to take legal action against you and seek damages and remedies for the same,” the memo states. “Consider this letter a final warning to stop your unrestricted conduct and legal activities toward me.”
Heimel said in an email on Sept. 11, that she filed the suit on her own and is “Sick of getting pushed around and dismissed by this county.”
The case has been assigned to Superior Court Judge Lisa Lott.
Heimel, an officer in Conservatives of Northeast Georgia, qualified to be listed as a Democrat on the ballot in November, but she has not been active in the Democratic Party and is not being supported by the Democratic Party.
Heimel has been an active member of the Oconee County Republican Party and served as a poll watcher for the Party in the May 2022 primaries.
Incumbent Post 1 Commissioner Mark Thomas is the Republican Party nominee on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Challengers Of Registration
At its July 9 meeting, the Board of Elections and Registration voted not to proceed with a challenge of 45 Oconee County voters filed by Stephen Aleshire “due to lack of probable cause.”
Aleshire unsuccessfully sought the Republican Party nomination for the open Post 5 on the Board of Education in the May primary.
Cruz, who subsequently submitted the three lists of challenged voters, ran unsuccessfully for the Republican Party nomination for Post 4 on the Board of Commissioners in May. Incumbent Post 4 Commissioner Mark Saxon won the party nomination.
Aleshire and Cruz, who are married, both spoke at the Aug. 6 meeting of the Elections and Registration Board during the public comment section of the meeting, as did three others, according to minutes of that meeting.
Cruz then made the argument for the removal of the names of Deidre Dove and Jordan Jarry from the rolls at the Aug. 15 meeting.
Dove was registered at the Bogart Post Office, and Jarry was registered at the UPS Store on Epps Bridge Parkway, according to Gregg.
New Challenge
At the Sept. 4 meeting, Gregg told the Board she had received a new challenge on Aug. 27 while the staff was out of the office for training.
Gregg said the list contained “links to documentation that shows that the voters registered in another state. Some where were registrations in another state. Some were homestead exemptions in another state.”
“My recommendation to the Board is that there is probable cause to move forward with this challenge,” she said.
Attorney Haygood said that the next step should be for Gregg to send out a notice to the challenged voter inviting her or him to attend the next meeting of the Board if the person desires.
The challenged voters also can fill out a residency affidavit or fill out a form saying they no longer live in the county, he said.
“If they come to vote,” he said, “they can also prove that they are qualified to vote at that time.”
The Board voted to move forward with the challenge based on finding “probable cause that this voter does not have the right to vote in the next election.”
Gregg did not identify the person who had submitted this third list at the meeting but said in an email message on Sept. 11 that Cruz also had submitted the third list and that it contained 30 names.
New Policy Adopted
At the Sept. 4 meeting, the Board adopted a new Policy For Voter Challenges, replacing the policy it had adopted at the July 9 meeting of the Board.
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| Board Listening To Public Comment Noah Armstrong, Elections Technician, Gregg, Hanley, Shook, Jones, Davis, Haygood (L-R) |
County Attorney Haygood said “he was not very happy” with how part of that previous document read.
Haygood said the policy needed to differentiate between two types of challenges, one called a 229 challenge and the other a 230 challenge, referring to Georgia Code.
The 229 challenge “was a little more regular and took some time to go through,” Haygood said, while the 230 challenge was designed to keep a person from voting in an upcoming election.
Based on recent legislative changes, he said, “I almost think that what we’ve got is a situation where anybody making a challenge would make a 230 challenge followed by a 229 challenge.”
Haygood said the new document was borrowed from other counties and was based on guidance from the Georgia Secretary of State.
The documents specifies the documents that should be submitted with challenges and how they should be submitted as well as a host of other procedures.
The Board unanimously adopted the seven page document, which is now on the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration web site.
Board And Haygood Exchange
Board Member Ken Davis, representing the Democratic Party, said the document may create “an onerous system to go through to get somebody challenged to get them off the list, but I think it is even worse if we take people off when it is not justified and deny them a right to vote.”
“It is always a line-drawing process,” Haygood said. “And the line here, based on both federal and state law, favors the voter staying on the list.”
“I think we all believe,” Haygood said, turning to Cruz, “Dr. Cruz has the best motive at heart in all of this and she is trying to help. And I applaud that.”
“It can also be weaponized against any number of groups of people,” he said. “The law presumes a protection of rights, so we are where we are, and we’ll go forward with it.”
Board Composition
The Board of Elections and Registration has five members.
Board Chair Jay Hanley is an appointee of the Board of Commissioners, as is Shami Jones and Doug Hammond.
Hammond has withdrawn from the Board until after the November election because his son, Adam, is running as a Republican for the open Post 4 on the Board of Education.
Jones is active in the Republican Party at present, and Hanley has been Republican Party Chair in the past.
Kirk Shook is the Republican Party appointee to the Board, and Ken Davis is the Democratic Party appointee.
Registration
As part of her report to the Board, Gregg said at the Aug. 6 meeting that Oconee County had 31,268 Active voters on its rolls, and 2,405 Inactive voters, for a total of 33,673.
At the Sept. 4 meeting, Gregg reported that the county had 31,461 Active voters, and 2,378 Inactive voters, for a total of 33,839 voters.
The deadline for registration for the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7, 2024.
Gregg reported at the Sept. 4 meeting that her office already had received 623 applications for absentee ballots, with 338 of those rollover requests from seniors from earlier elections, and 235 are new.
Gregg said she will begin mailing out the absentee ballots on Oct. 7.
Oct. 25 is the deadline for requesting an absentee ballot.
Heimel Motion For Injunction
In her Sept. 12 filing, Heimel, saying she is representing herself in the case, said she wants the Court “to render actions taken at the Aug. 6, 2024, meeting of the Board of Elections wherein the Board voted to dismiss 230 challenged voters without the required hearing null and void.”
The Board did not dismiss the voters, but rather it dismissed the challenge of all but two of the 228 challenged voters.
The filing states that “the board, while dismissing these challenges without the required hearings failed to full its duties to remove dead and ineligible voters...and failed to confirm eligibility of voters” as required by Georgia law.
The request is that the Court “Declare the resolution, rules, or other official actions taken, made or adopted in reference to the dismissal of the challenged voters at the Aug. 6, 2024, meeting are invalid.”
Heimel also wants the Court to “Instruct the Board to allow the challenged voters to vote by provisional ballot in the upcoming general election on Nov. 5, 2024" and “Instruct the Board to verify the eligibility of each provisional ballot cast by the challenged voters before counting the ballot in the general election.”
Heimel also wants the Court to “correct” the policy it adopted at the Sept. 4 meeting “to reflect the actual code stated in” Georgia code.
Finally, Heimel wants the Court to award her “filing fees associated with this suit as well as any further relief the Court deems appropriate.”
Video
Terry and Harold Thompson, as a favor for me, video recorded the meetings of the Board of Elections and Registration on Aug. 6, Aug. 15, and Sept. 4.
Unfortunately, the recording of the Aug. 6 picks up only the second half of the meeting, beginning after the public comment.
The videos of the other two meetings are complete.
The discussion of the revisions to the Policy For Voter Challenges begins at 8:11 in the first video below from the Sept. 4 meeting.
Discussion of the most recent challenge of 30 voters begins at 31:12 in the video of the Sept. 4 meeting.
4 comments:
Anyone know where I can get a Mark Thomas yard sign?
Eric - if you put any more GOP signs in your front yard, the neighbors are going to assume you moved away🤣
The goal of these “concerned citizens” is to interfere with our election process in order to sow doubt and confusion in the process. Last minute voter challenges and threats of lawsuits are currently taking place in multiple Georgia counties by a small group of extremists. Early voting is only a month away. Now is the time for our election officials to be training poll workers and preparing for the upcoming national election, not addressing last minute lawsuits and voter challenges. Voters should not have to fear they will be listed as “challenged” on the election rolls when they go to vote, forcing them to vote by provisional ballot.
A dozen activists have filed more than 100,000 individual voter challenges in Georgia and have brought lawsuits against local Boards of Elections and the State of Georgia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/us/politics/georgia-voting-2024-election.html
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