Dec. 14, 2009

Cedar Bluff election results (finally) in

By Scott Wright

CEDAR BLUFF — It took over 16 months to seat them, but the Cedar Bluff Town Council finally has three new members, as of last week. Candidates Evan Smith, Jack Bond, and Mark Hicks will join Lenora McWhorter, also recently elected, and Leatha Harp on the five-member Council.

Evan Smith defeated incumbent Billie Jean Burkhalter by 11 votes for the District 1 seat. In District 3, longtime town official Martha Baker -- who has served as mayor and on the Town Council in the past -- was defeated in her bid to return to the Council. In District 4, sheriff's deputy Mark Hicks defeated Tammy Crane, 55-45.

Election results are scheduled to be verified Dec. 15 at 11:45 a.m. at the Town Hall.

The town's municipal election was originally held on Aug. 28, 2008. But mayoral candidate Jimmy Wallace -- who finished third in the initial voting -- challenged the results, claiming over 30 absentee ballots were improperly handled by town officials or marked by someone other than the voter for whom the ballot was originally intended.

Two other candidates eventually joined Wallace's lawsuit. Then, the case was sent to Etowah County after all three judges in Cherokee County recused themselves. The trio cited a potential conflict of interest in ruling on the case because Smith, an attorney in Centre, regularly argues before all three.

By October 2008, the legal wrangling had begun and lasted almost a year. Etowah County Circuit Judge William Rhea heard arguments in the opening round of the legal battle on Oct. 7, including the following assertions: Burkhalter maintained that she would have been the outright winner of the District 1 because Smith received all eight absentee votes; McWhorter sought to have 15 absentee votes for candidate Donald Sanders tossed out because they gave him a nine-vote edge in the District 2 race; Wallace said he would move into second place, and a runoff with Sprouse, if absentee votes for Lay were removed from the final tally. (Lay died of complications from open-heart surgery several weeks after the municipal election.)

Sprouse, who had received the most votes in the mayoral race, sought to have the case dismissed. Smith and Sanders, who eventually lost out to McWhorter, also filed motions to have the lawsuit challenging the absentee ballots thrown out.
Later that month, Judge Rhea ruled for the plaintiffs. But Smith filed an appeal and the case continued.

In May of this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that Rhea ruled incorrectly because Alabama law does not grant the court system jurisdiction over contested election results until one candidate has been “declared elected.”

As a result, Rhea's October 2008 decision to subtract “improperly delivered” absentee ballots from some of the town's municipal election results was overturned.

Subsequently, Sprouse was named mayor and McWhorter was awarded the District 2 seat. Both have already taken their new positions. They will be joined by the other newly elected officials at the next Council meeting.

Repeated attempts to reach Mayor Sprouse for comment were unsuccessful.