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Testimony ends, deliberations begin in Senate election dispute Thursday, Mar 27, 2008 By Rob Moritz Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Testimony in a historic legislative hearing on a disputed 2006 state Senate runoff election in East Arkansas ended Wednesday evening, leaving seven senators to decide whether to recommend expulsion for a colleague. "The credibility of the Senate is at hand," said Sen. Bobby Glover, D-Carlisle, commenting on the gravity of the decision to be made by members of the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs after hearing two days of contradictory evidence in former state Rep. Arnell Willis' bid to overthrow the results of the District 16 Senate election he lost to Earle school superintendent Jack Crumbly. The committee met briefly Wednesday evening and will return today to resume deliberating Willis' allegations of voter fraud. The panel eventually will recommend to the full Senate whether Crumbly, D-Widener, should keep his seat. Crumbly's lawyer, Robin Carroll of El Dorado, urged lawmakers to reject Willis' arguments, saying the committee was "promised rabbit tracks in the snow. All we got was the Easter bunny." "I don't think there was any real hard proof that you should consider," Carroll said, adding that evidence presented during the hearing brought into question no more than 30 votes, while Crumbly defeated Willis by 68 votes. Officials previously said Crumbly won by 74 votes in a recount after Willis initially was declared the winner. In his closing statement, Willis attorney Mike Easley of Forrest City maintained he provided evidence suggesting 881 votes cast in the election were questionable and should have been stricken. "If this election is so indefinite that you cannot take ballot results from it and have confidence in them, then it must be thrown out," Easley said. Crumbly was sworn into office in January 2007. In questioning Wednesday, Easley pressed St. Francis County Prosecutor Fletcher Long about Long's investigation into the alleged election fraud, specifically why he never filed charges against any of the people who were found to have voted more than once. Long said he determined, through an investigation aided by a state police investigator, that there were just five cases of people voting twice. In one case, the person died. In three others, it appeared the voter either mistakenly voted twice, or someone did forge their name. Long said he is still investigating one case. Easley also questioned the propriety of Long investigating the voter fraud allegations while still representing the St. Francis County Election Commission, and whether Long was biased toward commission chairman Frederick Freeman, whom Easley charged was one of the ringleaders of the alleged election fraud. The state police investigator "never brought me anything indicating acts of criminal misconduct by any member of the election commission," Long said, adding the investigator also "never indicated to me, other than the double voting, that he had found any evidence of voter misconduct." The prosecutor said state statutes require him to represent the commission, but that if he had found evidence of criminal activity he would have recused himself as the commission's attorney and prosecuted the case. Willis, a three-term state House member at the time, appeared to have won the June 2006 runoff against Crumbly, the Earle school superintendent, after the initial vote count showed Willis ahead by 28 votes. However, a recount put Crumbly ahead by 68 votes, and a second recount confirmed Crumbly as the winner. Willis filed a lawsuit in St. Francis County Circuit Court challenging the election results. A special circuit judge ruled in February that the Legislature, not the courts, should decide who should occupy the Senate seat. Also Wednesday, two election workers testified about voting irregularities they witnessed during the runoff election, including cardboard boxes with election results being found in a hallway and janitor's closet. B.J. Griffith, a poll worker, told the committee she found 72 election stubs wrapped neatly in a rubber band in one of the election stub boxes. The stubs, normally folded so they can be squeezed into the small slot at the top of the box, were flat and unfettered. "There is no way a stub is going to get into a stub box in pristine condition," Griffith said. She also said she saw Freeman on the night of the June 13, 2006, runoff carry off 50-60 absentee ballots before she and other poll workers had counted them. "I was so angry," Griffith said. Freeman denied taking any absentee ballots during questioning Monday. At the close testimony Wednesday, several senators on the committee said they thought there was evidence presented suggesting voter fraud, but that they were struggling with whether that fraud swayed the outcome of the election. "I don't think there is any question that irregularities occurred as far as this case is concerned," Glover said. |
