Camilla’s special election was canceled, then resumed from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m.. What happened?

CAMILLA – While polling places across the state of Georgia entered the final three hours of election day, one polling site had just opened its doors.

A special election in Camilla here ran from about 4 p.m. until 4 a.m. after an attempted cancellation by city leaders.

The night before, the city’s elections superintendent and assistant superintendent resigned, leaving the city without anyone to certify its special election. Camilla’s Mayor, Kelvin Owens, said this was the reason for canceling.

However, a judge appointed new election workers amid voter complaints and re-opened polls for the special election at 3:50 p.m. Tuesday.

Victoria Lee, a 19-year-old first-time voter in Camilla, said one day later she isn’t quite sure what happened. Lee said confusion rippled among her coworkers as they read the cancellation notice and questioned if it would affect voting in the presidential election.

“It makes it a little bit sketchy and makes you wonder if the truth is being told,” she said. “I don’t think there should be any confusion around an election ever.”

Chris Cohilas, an Albany attorney who filed a lawsuit on behalf of Camilla residents against former Councilmen Venturra Pollard and Corey Morgan, claiming they didn’t live within the city limits in 2022, called the attempted cancellation an attack on democracy.

“We will make certain to see contempt sanctions before the trial court, and we’ll be presenting our case to the Attorney General’s office, the U.S. Attorney’s office and the district attorney’s office of each and every infraction, which we contend are violations of state and or federal election interference law,” Cohilas said.

Concerns about the Camilla election popped up across the state, including with the Georgia NAACP, which announced an investigation into the situation. That organization’s president, Gerald Griggs, said his organization had spoken to involved parties on a Zoom call.

General election voting still ran regularly in Camilla. Most cities in Georgia contract with their counties in order to have city races on the same ballot as the general election. Camilla is one of three cities in the state that conducts its city elections separately.

“Our main concern was making sure voters were able to vote in the general election,” Griggs said. “Then, we were trying to understand why the special election was postponed.”

Owens said on a phone call with The Albany Herald Wednesday that in order to understand what happened on Election Day, it’s important to look back two years prior.

Camilla’s ‘first progressive, black voting bloc’

In January 2022, Owens took office as Camilla’s mayor. He said he and the three councilmen from District 1 – Morgan, Raimond Burley and Pollard, became the city’s “first progressive black voting bloc,” meaning they often voted together in favor of common concerns.

Camilla has a population of about 5,000 people – 68% of whom are black.

“We started making a series of decisions that we believe will help move our city forward,” Owens said. “The proof’s in the pudding of what we’ve been able to accomplish as a city over the last almost 2 1/2 years.”

One of these accomplishments is the Georgia Department of Community Affairs’ designating the city as a PlanFirst community.

“The city of Camilla will be recognized across the state of Georgia as a community that has created a robust vision of its future and maintains an active strategy for implementing that vision,” the DCA letter read.

However, Owens said there are people within the city who were upset by this voting bloc. At a May 2022 council meeting, he said Chairman of the Mitchell County Development Authority Joe Bostick warned that business wouldn’t come to the city if it continued to “vote along racial lines.”

“Now, in our mind, that meant one of two things: either a), if we keep voting as a black voting bloc, if businesses want to come to Camilla, you’re going to pick up the phone and tell them ‘don’t come,’” Owens said. “Or you’re saying that if businesses won’t come here, then four black men voting together is bad for business.”

In November 2022, Bostick and MCDA Vice Chairman David Cooper filed a lawsuit challenging councilmen Pollard’s and Morgan’s residency, as Georgia law requires elected officials to live in their districts. Owens said that while Pollard and Morgan lease apartments in Albany and Pelham, they claim their primary residences are in Camilla.

Pollard and Morgan represented themselves in court, backed by driver’s licenses and tax documents. However, a Superior Court judge ruled in July 2023 that they were not residents of Camilla and ordered their removal from the council.

Owens said the two deserved a jury trial. They appealed the decision, but their appeal was denied in December 2023. Morgan’s term expired, but he qualified for re-election, while Pollard resigned yet still qualified for a special election, as his removal occurred outside the relevant 12-month window for qualification.

However, Cohilas raised concerns, and the judge demanded Pollard’s name be removed from the ballots.

When Pollard refused, the court ordered the city’s elections superintendent not to count votes for Pollard, requiring posted signs stating this. When the city hesitated to comply, the judge ordered deputies to ensure the signs stayed up.

The elections superintendent also would be escorted by law enforcement to count votes in front of the judge. If not, they risked legal trouble.

“Apparently, that was a straw that broke the camel’s back,” Owens said. “They were put in an impossible position – either they follow their oath and don’t count Pollard’s votes, or ignore what this judge said, count the votes and risk going to prison. They had one surefire way of not making that choice. They quit.”

With no elections superintendent, the mayor used emergency powers to cancel the election.

Cohilas accused Owens of engineering the superintendent’s actions and “inventing a reason to cancel the election.”

“We got testimony that they were directed by the city attorney to violate the court order,” Cohilas said. “That’s really bad. You can’t just cancel an election.”

After voters complained, another judge appointed different election workers and opened the polls in the late afternoon.

Getting to the bottom of the situation

The city is divided over what happened on Election Day and over the ongoing legal battle to remove Pollard and Morgan from their council positions.

Vernon Twitty, a 76-year-old Camilla resident and former mayor, said it was inappropriate to cancel the election.

“You don’t stop elections,” he said. “Not in this country. I think the mayor was not getting what he wanted, so he decided he was just going to cancel it. It’s supposed to be a transparent city, and obviously there was no transparency with this. I just hope we can learn and move forward.”

Supporters and critics of Owens flooded Facebook with comments on the city’s post, sharing a city address from Owens Wednesday night.

“Thank you, Mayor Kelvin M. Owens and team, for growing the city of Camilla in a manner that could possibly cause more citizens to stay in Camilla upon graduation,” Sharon Daniels wrote on the post. “A city for us as African Americans to be proud to call home. … I was born and raised in Camilla, and I have been praying for quite some time for some of the things that I am able to see come to pass.”

Others accused Owens of violating their rights.

Cohilas said he will ensure that Owens’ attacks on democracy and violations of court orders are completely and thoroughly prosecuted to the end of the Earth.

“The city of Camilla has no business conducting its own election,” he said. “It creates massive confusion, and they started doing this because of the mayor. He will control the election superintendent … so he can do the very illegal things that he’s been doing. He’s a dangerous combination of stupid and corrupt.”

Cohilas said Camilla’s citizens won’t forget about this.

“It has been burned into the memory of every citizen of the city of Camilla who had their right to vote stolen from a toddler masquerading as a mayor, who is nothing more than a bully,” he said.

Owens said the Election Day mess was a culmination of an unfair legal battle.

“My position as a citizen of this city – not the mayor – is that this was politically and racially motivated,” he said.

Owens said he’s been in communication with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division since mid-October.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of all of this,” he said. “The chaos that has been caused will not go unanswered.”

File Photo: Alan MauldinAlanMauldin[email protected]
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