Two of at-large hopeful’s listed petition circulators accuse campaign of forging their signatures
Two people listed as gathering 507 signatures for the S. Kathryn Allen at-large campaign for DC Council told the city’s Board of Elections Friday under oath that their names were forged on Allen’s petitions.
Their testimony bolstered at-large Council member Elissa Silverman’s challenge to Allen’s nominating petitions to qualify for the November ballot. Leonard Howard told the board that he did not gather signatures for the campaign despite being listed as having done so, and Tameka Lewter wrote the same in a signed affidavit. “Someone is using my information and I did not gather any signatures on behalf of” Allen, Lewter wrote.
A lawyer for Silverman argued that the board should throw out all of the signatures belonging to petition circulators who say their names were forged. Elections officials on Wednesday accepted 3,101 of Allen’s signatures as valid, allowing the campaign just a 101-signature buffer.
Silverman has been seeking to keep Allen — a business community-backed candidate running against the incumbent’s lefty agenda — off the ballot by alleging her petitions are riddled with fraudulent signatures, fake signature gatherers and technical errors.
Dara Lindenbaum, a lawyer for Allen, contended that real signatures should not be disqualified in spite of questions over who collected the signatures.
“They have certainly not met their burden of proof here,” Lindenbaum told the board. She said the signatures of the allegedly forged circulators look similar to their signatures on voter-registration files.
Another issue raised by the Silverman side involves Allen’s campaign manager, Kevin Parker. Parker is listed as circulating petition forms that the Silverman campaign alleges contain fake signatures. Rashid Mathus testified to the Board of Elections Friday that he did not sign his name on a nominating petition circulated by Parker that lists Mathus’ name and signature.
“That is not my signature,” Mathus said under questioning from Silverman’s lawyer, Joseph Gonzalez. “That is also not my print handwriting,” adding “I do not know anyone named Kevin Parker.”
Mary Lord, a witness called to speak by an attorney for the Allen campaign, said she did sign her name on a nominating petition for Allen. But Lord, a former member of the DC State Board of Education, then blurted out amid protestations from Allen’s lawyer that her name was also twice forged on petitions circulated by Parker.
After an objection from Lindenbaum was denied, Lord continued: “Imagine finding a forged check or somebody signing up for a lease on an apartment in your name. It had the same frightening effect.”
“To not be able to meet the simple test of office, to me, was a thumb in the eye of the system, and frankly it disrespected the voters,” she added.
Allen launched her campaign with support from two heavyweights of the DC political establishment — former Mayor Anthony Williams and former at-large DC Council member David Catania, who co-chair her campaign. But Allen’s campaign has been hobbled by Silverman’s allegations of signature fraud, and the Board of Elections will decide by Monday whether her name will appear on the ballot.
For over a week, questions about Parker’s status as campaign manager have gone unanswered. Pressed on WAMU’s Politics Hour a week ago, Allen declined to say whether Parker was still part of the campaign. Representatives of her campaign did not respond to a voicemail and an email from The DC Line.
In Silverman’s complaint filed with the Board of Elections, Gonzalez write that Parker “is absent from his residence and has ignored phone calls, voicemails, and even emails from this Board requesting his testimony.”
In a new allegation, Silverman’s attorney said at Friday’s hearing that several of Allen’s petition sheets appear to copy signatures and names from sheets turned in by Marcus Goodwin, who unsuccessfully challenged Anita Bonds for the Democratic at-large nomination in June. In some cases, voter names and signatures are copied line by line, Silverman’s complaint alleges.
The registrar of the Board of Elections released a preliminary review of Silverman’s challenge on Wednesday, ruling that nearly half of the 6,068 signatures turned in by Allen were invalid, with 951 signatures struck due to “unqualified petition circulators” and the rest for a variety of other reasons. Of Allen’s remaining 3,101 signatures, Silverman’s challenge calls into doubt 724 signatures listed as collected by Howard, Lewter and Parker.
Lindenbaum told the board that Silverman’s counsel has not presented enough evidence that the alleged petition circulators did not actually sign their names to the sheets.
“The voters have signed these petitions. They want to see their candidate on the ballot,” Lindenbaum said. “To throw them out based on this conjecture would disenfranchise over 3,000 people. Let’s let this play out on the ballot and see what the voters have to say.”
[…] of those four purported signature-gatherers, Leonard Howard, told board members under oath Friday that he did not circulate petitions for the campaign despite being listed as having collected 907 […]