As the East Baton Rouge Parish Registrar of Voters office continues the process of verifying a new batch of 4,630 signatures submitted last week by organizers of the St. George incorporation effort, opponents of the movement this week called into question the validity of more than 200 signatures on the original petition submitted by the incorporation group last October.
Officials with Better Together, which is fighting the incorporation, released a report this week claiming 239 signatures previously validated by the registrar’s office are potentially invalid—either because the signatories did not live in the proposed St. George footprint at the time they signed the petition or were not registered to vote.
According to a statement from Better Together, an analysis of signatures on the original petition suggests 88 signatures are potentially invalid. The group is also questioning the validity of an additional 151 signatures because they do not appear on a list of registered voters that was requested by Better Together at the time the petition was submitted.
“This analysis shows that there are some major problems in the registrar’s validation process,” says M.E. Cormier, a leader with the Better Together campaign.
Aimee Pourciau, an assistant in the registrar’s office—which spent more than five months vetting the signatures on the original petition—says the office is unaware of the complaint and has no comment.
St. George spokesman Lionel Rainey is outraged.
“At some point you’ve got to let the Registrar of Voters do their job and stop interfering in the process,” Rainey says. “Better Together has done everything they possibly can to interfere in the electoral process and prevent this from getting on the ballot. At what point does this become interfering with an election?”
In other registrar office-related news this week, former Metro Councilman Ulysses “Bones” Addison hopes to get back into city government—this time as the next East Baton Rouge Parish Registrar of Voters. Addison, who served three terms on the council from 2001-2012, is among 24 hopefuls who have applied for the position, which longtime Registrar Elaine Lamb is vacating as she retires.
Addison is campaigning for the position and says he has received firm commitments of support from at least two council members, whom he declines to identify. But he says it’s too soon to say he has the seven votes necessary to be appointed to the position, which will pay between $85,000 and $117,000, according to the Council Administrator’s office.
“We talked at length about why he wants to be in that position and why he thinks he’s right for the job; all those good standard interview-type questions,” says Metro Councilman Joel Boé.
When asked if Addison is a frontrunner for the job, Boé says: “To say that he’s in the lead, I’m not sure about that, but I would expect he’s got a decent amount of support among the council.”
Read the complete Daily Report Week in Review for a rundown of other top local stories making headlines this week.
