Voter fraud cases leave Hale County wary By Robert DeWitt Staff Writer
Published: Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 3:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 11:16 p.m. GREENSBORO | It seems only natural that the arrest of former Hale County Circuit Clerk Gay Nell Tinker on charges of voter fraud would be the talk of the town.
Staff photo | Robert DeWitt Mike Jeffries, shown washing a pickup outside his detail shop in Greensboro on Thursday, says he doesn’t think the former Circuit Clerk Gay Nell Tinker did anything wrong and that the voter fraud investigation was racially motivated.But a lot of people in Hale County aren't talking.
Outside the Sawyerville Convenience Store, a middle-aged black man wearing a sport coat over a T-shirt just shakes his head when he hears the topic.
'No, not me,' he said when asked his name. 'I don't get into that.'
A middle-aged white man in jeans, a denim shirt and ball cap pauses over his meal at the Mustang Oil café in Greensboro and shakes his head in much the same way. He knows why he won't involve himself in the subject and thinks he knows why others won't either.
'Why? Because they're not going to do a thing to them,' he said, referring to the three people, including Tinker, who were indicted on voter fraud charges. 'They're going to walk free, and they're guilty.'
Tinker, Rosie Lyles and Valada Paige Banks, all black, have been charged with crimes stemming from alleged voter fraud. The indictments come after a tumultuous decade during which thousands of the county's absentee ballots became the deciding votes in municipal and county elections.
In that time, a bank where absentee ballots had been stored for the district attorney burned in an arson that remains unsolved and the Greensboro mayoral election was overturned by the courts. A judge issued an arrest warrant for the probate judge and an attorney general's investigator looking into voter fraud allegations was thrown in jail.
Opposing camps fired salvos at each other, one charging fraud while the other claimed racism. Alabama's secretary of state Beth Chapman made the county her poster child for election reform and civil rights activist Al Sharpton came to town to whip up support for Lyles and Banks.
Public on edge
Such events have left people feeling too sensitive to talk about it openly. Sitting at his table at the Mustang, Big Ray Duncan, who operates the local farmer's co-op, thinks he understands why.
'Anything we say may come across as racist in this day and time,' said Duncan, who is white. 'Nobody wants to cause any more trouble in a little town like this.'
Merchants, both black and white, are particularly sensitive. They say it would be bad for business to talk.
One young black man sitting outside his store is insistent that the store's name not appear in print.
'This isn't going to be in there?' he said, pointing up to the sign above him bearing the store's name.
For all their reluctance, people in Hale County are not unfriendly or uninformed. And some do speak up. Mike Jeffries shrugged and said he had nothing to hide as he washed a pickup at his detail stand.
'Back when this first happened, we had the same case with the white people,' said Jeffries, who is black. 'When that happened, we couldn't get anybody down here to investigate. When black people get into office they always find something wrong. You got all these people coming down here to investigate.'
Jeffries doesn't think Tinker did anything wrong.
'She never did anything but try to help the community,' he said.
Among the most outspoken critics of the voter fraud investigation is state Sen. Bobby Singleton, Tinker's ex-husband and a major beneficiary of absentee votes. He could not be reached for comment.
Down the street from Jeffries' detail shop, Verlie Campbell enjoyed the evening sun in a chair outside. An Ohio native, he said he was shocked at some of the things he saw going on.
'Folks going into vote and they find out somebody's already voted in their name, that's wrong,' said Campbell, who is black. He believes voter fraud is a serious matter and ought to be investigated.
Perry Beasley of Greensboro believes the racism charges just don't hold water.
'The majority of the people who vote over here are black,' said Beasley, who is white. 'All of the candidates involved are black. The vast majority of the people who vote over here, black and white, are Democrats. It's funny how they try to make this into something racial.'
Beverly Bonds of Greensboro agreed.
'This is about right and wrong,' said Bonds, who is also white. 'Voter fraud is voter fraud.'
Push for action
Bonds and Beasley are members of the Democracy Defense League, an organization founded to fight voter fraud in Hale County. They say the indictments are a start.
'It's significant in the sense that we may finally be seeing the criminal justice system get involved in this,' Beasley said.
Probate Judge Leland Avery, who has found himself in the center of the storm at times, agreed.
'I've been talking to the attorney general's office since 1998 about the way they do absentee ballots here,' Avery said. 'I'm grateful to Troy King that he'd come down and investigate.'
He said he's been frustrated at times, but now he feels progress is being made.
'Everybody has been waiting on them to do something about voter fraud,' Avery said.
Some people believe it's been too long coming.
'If the indictments don't get turned into a trial soon, people are going to say, ‘So what?' ' said Ronny Crawford, a member of the Democracy Defense League and chairman of the county's Democratic Executive Committee. 'When's it going to come to fruition?'
People want to see results, Crawford said.
'A guy goes down here and sticks up a gas station and he's in jail in 18 months,' Crawford said. 'This has been under investigation for three and a half years.'
But Bonds observed the proceedings involved in overturning the mayoral election. It is by necessity a lengthy process, she said.
'There are so many facets to absentee ballots,' Bonds said. 'There are so many parts of it that have to be investigated. You have to get handwriting samples for forgery and all of these other details.'
That's why it's essential to change elections laws, making voter fraud harder to commit and penalties for committing it stiffer, Beasley said.
'The word ‘thug' is gender- neutral,' Beasley said. 'When some thug steals a vote that 1.4 million people sacrificed their lives for, that thug deserves far worse than the criminal justice system offers.'
The Democracy Defense League, which has both black and white members, has worked to expand statewide because they say voter fraud is a widespread problem. Complaints have come from Mobile, Baldwin, Jefferson, Monroe, Fayette, Barbour and other counties.
'The reason it's chronic over here is that some of the people who have used illegal means to gain office now sit in positions of public trust,' Beasley said. 'They're in position to make it more difficult to identify voter fraud and they're in position to make it more difficult to prosecute voter fraud.'
He wants any crime committed with the intent of altering an election made a Class A felony. Anyone convicted would serve at least six and a half years, said Beasley, a former agent with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation.
'This is not stealing a car,' Beasley said. 'This goes back to this country being a democratic republic. People have to have trust in their government. People cannot trust their government if they don't have faith and trust in the electoral process.
