Assistant Pine Bluff Chief of Police Ivan Whitfield said Thursday night that he will be filing a complaint Friday with the Jefferson County Election Commission alleging voting irregularity in Tuesday’s Democratic primary runoff.
According to complete, but unofficial results, Whitfield lost to former Pine Bluff mayor Dutch King by 154 votes in the party’s contest for the county judge’s nomination.
King is slated to meet Republican Justice of the Peace Ted Harden for the post in the Nov. 4 general elections.
“Through researching results, we have found widespread Republicans being allowed to vote in the primary (runoff),” Whitfield said. “If we found it, they (the Election Commission) should have also found it.”
Whitfield said he and some of his campaign workers had discovered that an unspecified number of voters who cast Republican ballots in the May 22 preferential primary also marked Democratic tickets in the runoff, which is unlawful.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Only those who had voted as Democrats in or skipped the May 22 elections were to have been allowed to mark runoff ballots. There were no Republican runoffs.
Whitfield charged that the number of prior Republican voters checking ballots Tuesday wasn’t “just one or two, but many.”
Complete but unofficial runoff results show King with 4,091 votes to Whitfield’s 3,937, a 51-49 percentage split. Whitfield carried Pine Bluff while King dominated the remainder of the county.
Whitfield termed the Republican crossover “unacceptable and worthy of a look by the Election Commission” and added that the panel “should go back and review the entire voting process.”
“My goal isn’t just for Whitfield, but to see that this does not happen again,” he said. “One or two (irregularities) is too many, but many are unacceptable.”
In response to Whitfield’s comments, Commission Coordinator Will Fox said he and commissioners would agree that no improprieties are unacceptable.
“I’m sure the commission will take this matter under close scrutiny,” said Fox, who pointed out that it’s the duty of County Clerk Patricia Royal Johnson’s office to audit the votes and then notify the commission of its findings, if any.
“The clerk’s office is in charge of voters, and the commission is in charge of voting,” Fox explained.
Commission Chairman Trey Ashcraft said the commission is committed to doing what’s correct.
“We’ll work with the clerk’s office however necessary, but they tell us what we can do, not the other way around,” Ashcraft said.