In a south Georgia town racked by legal conflict, an election didn’t end until 3:50 am

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ATLANTA (AP) — It was almost the election that wasn’t.

Balloting didn’t finally begin in a special election to the city council in the southwest Georgia town of Camilla until 3:50 p.m. Tuesday, and didn’t straggle to a close until 3:50 a.m. Wednesday. A judge intervened to order the election to proceed after Camilla Mayor Kelvin Owens invoked his emergency powers Monday to cancel the voting after two city election officials resigned.

The legal fight over the election put an exclamation point on years of political struggle in the town of 5,000.

“It was kind of crazy,” Oscar Maples Jr., one of the candidates in the race, said Wednesday by phone.

Camilla, 55 miles (90 kilometers) north of Tallahassee, Florida, revolves around a Tyson Foods chicken processing plant and farming. Since 2022, city government has been knotted up over attempts to remove two council members — Venterra Pollard and Corey Morgan.

Their legal foes say neither Pollard nor Morgan live in Camilla, and thus can’t legally serve on the council. Pollard and Morgan have acknowledged they lease apartments in the cities of Albany and Pelham, respectively, but say their primary residences remain in the city that elected them.

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Pollard and Morgan have described themselves as “a progressive majority that believes in equity, inclusion, and diversity both socially and economically,” supporting Mayor Kelvin Owens. Pollard, Morgan and Owens, who are all Black, say the legal action brought by two residents to remove Pollard and Morgan is an attempt by the white minority to impose its will on the nearly three-quarters of Camilla’s residents who are Black.

“You had two white men tell about 1,300 African Americans, ‘You don’t know what to do with your vote, and we’ll make that choice for you,’” Owens said of the voters who Pollard and Morgan represented.

But Chris Cohilas, the lawyer for Pollard and Morgan’s challengers, said Owens is the one who is dragging race into the fight and that his clients only want to see the law enforced.

“All that they’ve ever wanted was a fair election with people that were actually qualified to run,” Cohilas said.

The legal action began in November 2022, when David Cooper and Joe Bostick sued Pollard and Morgan to challenge their residency. Pollard and Morgan decided to represent themselves. After hearing arguments that the two were trying to avoid submitting evidence and being evasive in depositions, Superior Court Judge Gary McCorvey ruled in July 2023 that Pollard and Morgan were not residents of Camilla and should be removed from the city council.

Pollard and Morgan said they should have been given a jury trial, saying they have driver’s licenses, paystubs and other documents proving their residence.

Neither one stepped down from the council while appealing. Then in December the Georgia Court of Appeals denied their attempt to overturn the ruling.

In the meantime, Morgan’s term expired and he was reelected. Cohilas argues he’s still not a resident.

Pollard stepped down, but then qualified for Tuesday’s special election to fill the unexpired term of the seat he resigned from. In September, McCorvey found Pollard in contempt and ordered him to withdraw his candidacy.

When Pollard did not do so, a new judge ordered Pollard disqualified, votes for Pollard discarded, and ordered the city to post signs saying votes for Pollard wouldn’t be counted. Camilla runs its own elections with separate polling places instead of contracting with Mitchell County.

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When the city still balked, the judge ordered sheriff’s deputies to stand guard to ensure the signs remained posted. Pollard argued that police presence, coupled with confusion over the election, amounted to “voter intimidation and suppression.”

The city appealed the ruling all the way to the state Supreme Court, but lost Friday.

But that wasn’t the end. In a City Council meeting Monday, the mayor announced the city’s election officials had resigned and he swiftly invoked his emergency powers to cancel the election.

On Tuesday morning, Councilmember W.D. “Danny” Palmer won a court order appointing new election officials and mandating polls to open and stay open for 12 consecutive hours — the length of time Georgia polling places are usually open between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Voting finally began at 3:50 p.m. Tuesday, with Maples and Claretha Thompson on the ballot. Maples, who said he stayed up until polls closed, said the conflict has been “very difficult for the city.” Votes were still being counted Wednesday and no result had yet been announced.

Maples, who lost an earlier bid for mayor, said he ran to bring “a little more unity to the city council, to unify them and make them a stronger council for the city,” saying he wanted to do more for Camilla’s senior citizens.

But Pollard said he plans to run again for city office.

“We were able to get some great things done for the city of Camilla, especially for our youth,” Pollard said of his time as councilman.