Neighborhood Council Elections: Progressives sweep Venice
elections
In an election landslide that stunned most
political observers, the Progressive Grassroots Candidates slate won all 10
contests for the neighborhood council board. The votes were counted on July
25.
The Progressives, who campaigned for more
affordable housing and community control of development, captured an average of
60 percent of the vote. The opposing slate, Team Venice, garnered an average of
about 40 percent of the vote. Independent candidates, who contested the
secretary and at-large positions did much
worse.
The results were not final at
press time, because four complaints had been filed to overturn the election or
throw out absentee ballots. One complaint was emailed to the city’s Dept.
of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) by Marta Evry, a losing candidate on the Team
Venice slate. She said that she had registered her dog, Raku, with the Grass
Roots Venice Neighborhood Council (GRVNC), and then marked and sent in his
absentee ballot. Evry alleged that this showed the possibility of widespread
fraud in the election.
Other complaints
included one stating that several candidates were members of the Peace and
Freedom Party and should not be eligible to take office. A third complaint
included email correspondence between two GRVNC Elections Committee members,
David Moring and Alice Stek. In the email exchange, Moring questions whether
some on the list requesting absentee ballots had actually made such a request.
Stek responded that she had verified that the individuals had made requests. A
forth complaint seeks to throw out all absentee
ballots.
Four councilmembers, Secretary
Elena Popp and at-large members Sheila Bernard, Lydia Poncé, Laddie
Williams, won reelection to second terms. Six others are new to the board. They
are Treasurer Jim Smith, Communications Officer Tom O’Meara, and at-large
members Elinor Aurthur, Peggy Lee Kennedy, Suzanne Thompson and Sabrina
Venskus.
They will join 11 other board
members whose terms run for another year. Two of these, Alice Stek and Chris
Wood, are also part of Progressive Grassroots Candidates. This will give the
Progressive slate a majority of 12 on the 21 member board. This is a reversal
from the past year when the Team Venice slate (known last year as the Groovnik
slate) held the majority.
The
Progressives also gained a majority on the executive committee, which is made up
of the seven officers, and sets the agenda for board meetings.
Julie Rajan, executive director of the
League of Women Voters, announced the vote count around 3pm on July 25 (see page
4). She noted that three days would be allowed for filing challenges to the
election.
Most election observers doubt that
any challenges would affect the outcome of the election since it was so
lopsided. In addition, the Team Venice slate were the most involved in
conducting the election.
“It
seems ironic to me that the complaints are being made by the very individuals
who devised the rules for the election, in particular the absentee rules,”
says Paul Ryan, Attorney and Political Reform Project Director at the
non-partisan, non-profit Center for Governmental Studies.
While the rules were not perfect I can
see no valid reason for throwing out all the absentee ballots or the election.
It’s virtually unheard of that an entire election would be thrown out
because some ballots would be thrown out,” he continued.
The Progressives believe they won both
the on-site election, June 28, and the absentee votes.
At press time, both Rajan of the
League of Women Voters and Jamiko Bell-Potts, a DONE Senior Project Coordinator,
were investigating the challenges. Bell-Potts reportedly consulted the the L.A.
City Attorney’s Office regarding the challenges and the possibility of
fraudulent voter activity. There is no time limit for resolving the challenges,
however, if they are rejected, a GRVNC Board meeting could be held in
August.
Posted: Fri - August 1, 2003 at 08:37 PM