Concrete stairs lead to a vacant lot at 607 Looney where voter Joe L. Light once lived. He died before the Senate election, but someone else apparently voted using his name.
Posted on 12/11/2005 8:02:47 AM PST by Sybeck1
The concrete steps lead from the street up a terrace to where a house once stood, where rolling brown grass now covers an empty lot.
This was the North Memphis home of Joe L. Light, a renowned folk artist who lost the property in foreclosure five years ago and wound up in a nursing home.
Yet someone claiming to be Light gave this address -- 607 Looney Avenue -- and voted in the September special election that put Ophelia Ford in the state Senate by a razor-thin margin.
There's an even bigger problem -- Light died on Aug. 6, six weeks before the election.
Somehow, records show, someone signed his name the day of the Sept. 15 election in the poll book at the North Memphis precinct where Light was registered to vote.
As a Senate committee prepares for a hearing Monday in Memphis to review challenger Terry Roland's bid to overturn the election because of alleged voting irregularities, the case has taken a new tone.
"There's so much question as to the whole process (of the special election), the feds should step in and look at it,'' said John Harvey, a volunteer who's heading the Roland campaign's investigation of the returns.
Roland, a Republican, lost the Dist. 29 senate seat by 13 votes in a race in which 8,750 ballots were cast.
Election officials already have conceded that three convicted felons and a voter registered outside Dist. 29 improperly voted in the contest.
Harvey said he's found as many as 69 people, including Light, who cast ballots that shouldn't count. Most are people who don't live at addresses given in voter registration records, he said.
Reviewing Harvey's list, The Commercial Appeal discovered that Light had died weeks before the election, yet his signature showed up in the poll book at Precinct 27-1 near his old home on Looney.
The poll book is the official record that voters sign when they show up at a polling place to cast a ballot on Election Day.
Harvey said he now suspects election fraud.
Shelby County Election Commission Chairman Greg Duckett agreed the development is serious.
"If (a dead person voted), then we have a major issue that we need to turn over to the District Attorney,'' Duckett said. As the commission did when it learned that three felons had voted, this matter will be referred for a criminal investigation, he said.
Still, Duckett said he believes the incident to be isolated and said he doesn't see grounds for overturning the election.
"You'd have to have a conspiracy the size of JFK'' to have widespread fraud, he said.
Duckett was one of three Democratic election commissioners who, overriding objectsions from two Republican commissioners, voted to certify Ford's 13-vote victory on Sept. 26.
Three days later, Ford, 55, took the oath of office, minutes after state election officials also certified the results.
Then in October, Senate Speaker John Wilder, a Democrat, appointed a six-member committee -- three Democrats and three Republicans -- to investigate continuing GOP complaints of voting irregularities.
Any finding by the committee is crucial because the full Senate must vote whether to seat Ford or Roland, 44. They're vying for the seat vacated by Ford's brother John Ford, who resigned in May after his indictment on bribery charges.
As Roland has pressed his election contest -- in a Chancery Court suit, in a pitch to the commission, and now before the Senate -- Duckett has grown increasingly impatient.
Elections auditors found no substantial irregularities, Duckett said, and state law limits the time and way in which a voter's residence can be challenged.
The accepted practice is to do it on election night, and that's why political parties typically deploy poll watchers to polling sites, Duckett said.
"They're trying to rewrite the processes,'' he said.
Harvey, who works as a lieutenant for the Sheriff's Office, said it's impractical to challenge residency solely on election night. He said he's logged countless hours on numbers of search engines and databases to tabulate his findings.
One of those searches led him to Joe Light.
A review by the newspaper found that Light, a painter whose works are in the Smithsonian Institution and in private collections of celebrities Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones, lost his home at 607 Looney in a 2000 foreclosure.
Light later spent time in a nursing home before dying of colon cancer. He was 70.
After the foreclosure the house eventually was condemned and razed in an urban renewal effort.
Light drifted through the community, and after his wife, Rosie Lee, died in 2003, he spent time in a nursing home, said art collector Craig Wiener, a friend.
Relatives listed in Lights' Aug. 9 obituary couldn't be reached.
A pleading filed last week with the Senate by Roland attorneys Lang Wiseman and Richard Fields contends that state law requires voters to live not just in the district but in the precinct where they are registered in order for their vote to count.
The pleading alleges that improper votes cast in the special election include one by Ms. Ford's nephew, Isaac Ford, who keeps a home in East Memphis, miles outside Dist. 29.
Citing improper residence, unsigned ballot applications and other irregularities, the pleading contends that at least 59 votes were improperly cast. The Senate should nullify the election and, at a minimum, call for a new election, the pleading says.
By Friday, Harvey said that number had grown to 69 and includes local radio talk show host and sometimes political candidate Jennings Bernard.
Reached by phone, Bernard conceded he's lived for years in Parkway Village outside Dist. 29, but said he lists his home in voter registration records inside the district in North Memphis, where he grew up, owns property and identifies with its people and concerns.
Regardless, Bernard said his vote wouldn't affect the race's outcome because he voted for eccentric businessman Robert 'Prince Mongo' Hodges, who says he's from the planet Zambodia. "He was the better candidate,'' Bernard said.
-- Marc Perrusquia: 529-2545
Copyright 2005, commercialappeal.com - Memphis, TN. All Rights Reserved.
Concrete stairs lead to a vacant lot at 607 Looney where voter Joe L. Light once lived. He died before the Senate election, but someone else apparently voted using his name.
Only one dead guy voted. That's excellent. The number of dead guys voting in Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland is probably almost as large as the population of Memphis.
Demo(n)cRATS are entitled to steal elections.
An election is "stolen" whenever Demo(n)cRATS are not allowed to cheat.
Knew it had to be a RAT.
I don't know which would be better, a new election or just sitting around waiting for the rest of the shoes to drop.
Hey, these are "underachievers". We have more fraud in one St Louis neighborhood than they had in the whole voting area. We've had dead people not only voting but filing lawsuits to keep the polls open after hours so the dims could get the East St Louis ILLINOIS voters over here, and, yes, the dimocRat judge allowed it. Sen Bond (R MO) went on record in the US Senate showing a dog that voted. (And no one ever goes to jail there). My point being, if you are going to cheat, do it big and no one will question the results. "G"
The Ford family is a criminal enterprise
I hope this kills the Senate bid of Junior
How is the Ford senatorial campaign coming along? Is he being opposed for his Democrat nomination?
By the fourth tiny paragraph I knew that the dead man was a democrat. If not, every paragraph would have refered to Republican deceit and fraud.
"By the fourth tiny paragraph I knew that the dead man was a democrat. "
I knew (surmized) it from the onset. I have NEVER seen an article that tallked of Republican voter fraud. Every one has been Dims.
Thanks for posting, I did a happy dance when my husband came in with the paper this morning. It's looking like the Memphis Mafia is finally going down. God does answer prayers ;)
Maybe the folks in Memphis will not have a FORD in their future....if they're lucky anyway!! :0 ) (my apologies to the Ford Motor Company, but it was too good a shot for me not to take!!)
.....Is he being opposed for his Democrat nomination?.....
I don't know of any, but that's not saying much.
It occasionally happens. I can think of one case in a small TX town, somewhere between Del Rio and San Antonio. Also some problems in Miami, New Jersey, and New York. But yes, it does appear that at least 90% of the cases of voter fraud involve Democrats.
I don't think he has credibile opposition yet.
Doesn't matter though.
He ticked someone off in his own party and they are going to screw him over bigtime.
I don't know if it was Rangel, Hillary, Kennedy or Reid, but he is one of the few dems, who is becoming a punching bag.
Pelosi doesn't even hide her contempt of him.
Tip of a very large iceberg.
I think you can add to this mess the fact that ALL college students attending school out of their home town are ripe for double voting. Once at school- absentee at their home address.
Considering the high number of college students in the USA, I think this is just as serious a problem, and it has to stop. I only get one vote, and I am legal. This should be corrected before 2006 elections.
Knowing Memphis RATS, probably more than one dead person and many felons voted for Ms. Ford.
"Still, Duckett said he believes the incident to be isolated and said he doesn't see grounds for overturning the election."
Well, no...he wouldn't, would he? When it gets down to brass tacks, the Tennessee Senate has a Republican majority. I hope they have the stones to deny Ford being seated.
Harold Ford, Jr. has missed a golden opportunity to get out front and call for his aunt's opponent to be seated. Not that I am surprised, but Jr. needs to muster some iota of credibility if he is serious about a U.S. Senate run, in '06.
"You'd have to have a conspiracy the size of JFK'' to have widespread fraud, he said.
He used that analogy on purpose, right?
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