Terry Roland, the Republican candidate who seeks to
overturn last fall’s special state Senate election in Shelby County’s District
29, made new charges Tuesday night about the election process which saw his
Democratic opponent, Ophelia Ford, sworn in after being declared the
winner by the Shelby County Election Commission.
“We’re looking into something else now,” Roland told
members of the newly formed Shelby County Conservative Republican Club, meeting
at the Fuego restaurant in Cordova. “We might have people who lived outside the
district who didn’t even know they voted. We might have had live voters going in
for people who didn’t vote. There’s an investigation going on right now.”
The “investigation” would, of course, be carried out
primarily by his longtime friend, computer maven, sheriff’s deputy, and current
candidate for sheriff, John Harvey. It was Harvey’s post-election
researches that began the process that uncovered voting by dead people, suspect
voting addresses, and other potential abuses and has chipped away at Ford’s
purported 13-vote majority. A Republican majority in the state Senate is poised
to void the election if that action can be squared with conditions of fairness
laid down last week by U.S. District Judge Bernice Donald. Judge Donald
was responding to Ford’s request for an injunction against a Senate vote on
due-process grounds.
“If she doesn’t have jurisdiction, how can she set
conditions?” Roland asked rhetorically but promised to abide by the court
ruling.
Roland said Tuesday night that Harvey, who was on hand and
confirmed the fact had also found “1300 people on the rolls in Shelby County
with two voter’s registration cards and two registration numbers.” He said the
election appeals launched by himself and Harvey were “not about me getting into
the Senate but about each one of you getting a fair shake.”
Summing up, Roland said, “If we cannot prove that you’re
getting a fair election, then we’re not a democracy any more.” He said the ongoing election contest – “my Groundhog Day” -was not about “irregularity” but about “illegality.”
Harvey also addressed the meeting briefly and, among other
things, accounted for his candidacy in the Republican primary against incumbent
Mark Luttrell this way: “The current sheriff is a nice guy, butr I don’t
think the sheriff should be taking money from convicted cocaine dealers” That
turned out to be a reference to developer Rusty Hyneman, a donor to many
political campaigns. Hyneman, as Harvey pointed out, was convicted of drug
charges back in 1986.
Also critcized by Harvey as sources of support for Luttrell
were the late businessman William B. Tanner and Tanner aide Joe
Cooper.
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