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Web posted Sunday,
September 5, 2004
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The "queen of Jasper
County"
Jasper County Councilwoman
Barbara Clark recently critically and
sarcastically called former state representative
and longtime political and civil rights leader
Juanita White the "queen of Jasper County."
Generally regarded as the county's most
influential Democratic leader, White also is a
member of the county Planning
Commission.
Dems meet
The
Jasper County Democratic Party at 7 p.m. on
Tuesday will hear representatives from the
Kerry-Edwards campaign and discuss the absentee
ballots that were thrown out during the June 8
primary election. The meeting is at the Wagon
Branch Community Center on S.C. 336 between
Ridgeland and Tillman. The public is
invited.
| | Jasper
election leaders blasted
RIDGELAND: Longtime political, civil
rights leader Juanita White criticizes voting
directors.
By Mark Kreuzwieser
Carolina Morning News
Juanita White has never been one to pull her
punches.
And she threw several haymakers at
Jasper County Board of Elections members on
Thursday evening.
"You all are trying to
take us back to slavery," White charged after the
elections officials spent an hour talking about
tightening procedures on absentee
voting.
Political observers have said for
years that absentee voting in Jasper County takes
on a life of its own, with hundreds of absentee
ballots cast in every election, many of them
brought in "in mass" by individuals, said Election
Board Vice Chairman Jake Rawl.
Apparently,
the election board had enough when, in the June 8
Democratic Primary, it threw out more than 280
absentee votes, saying the ballot applications had
been improperly requested. Members did not give an
exact number.
If a voter is infirm or in a
hospital, any person may request an absentee
ballot application for the
voter.
Otherwise, state law requires that
only an immediate family member may request an
absentee ballot application for a voter. Election
board members determined on primary election night
that the more than 280 ballots lacked proof of
that requirement.
White stood to address
the election board after its deliberations and
ridiculed members for "disenfranchising
voters.
"If you are not going to honor
those 280 voters whose ballots were thrown out,
you've got to notify each one of them if they had
indicated that they wanted to vote absentee in
Nov. 2's general election, too," she
said.
Election board officials admitted
they don't plan to allow those 280 voters to cast
absentee ballots Nov. 2 unless they again apply to
absentee vote.
"If I voted absentee, and I
was one of those 280 ballots thrown out, how would
I know?" White said. "I want a list of those
voters whose ballots were thrown out, and I want
the reasons."
Election board members said
they would get back to her on a list of the
absentee voters.
White proceeded to
lambaste election board members - all of whom are
in the process of being replaced, except Chairman
Donald Sheftall and Rawl - for running shoddy
elections and blaming problems on
voters.
"I have never seen an election
commission take this kind of action," tossing out
absentee ballots, "and I think it's an outrage,"
she said. "You are preventing people from voting.
They think they're voting, and you're throwing the
votes out. People are going to quit voting. It's a
form of intimidation."
Also getting White's
ire was the election board's discussion of
recording the phone numbers of people who call in
to request an absentee voting
application.
"Who's putting these crazy
ideas in your heads?" she said. "You're acting
like you are SLED (the South Carolina Law
Enforcement Division). You need to be helping
people to vote -- that's the law -- not
intimidating them."
Election board members
retorted that they are trying to control the
manipulation of the absentee voting process, not
hinder people's right to vote.
"In the
primary, we had people coming in with 40, 50
absentee voting ballots," board member Barbara
Pinckney said. "There was essentially ballot box
stuffing."
Responding to White's references
to "slavery," Pinckney said, "We've been friends a
long time. I don't understand this Jim Crow talk.
This has nothing to do with race."
White
answered, "I'll talk to you later."
After
the election board meeting had concluded, White
and Pinckney conversed privately for several
minutes.
Election board member Leroy Sneed,
a former County Council chairman, agreed with
White that voters whose ballots were thrown out in
the primary shouldn't have to re-apply to vote
absentee on Nov. 2.
Tempers then flared
when Sneed accused board Rawl and Pinckney of
interrupting him. "I've never seen such rude
people," Sneed said.
Sheftall said he still
hasn't heard from Gov. Mark Sanford on new
appointments to the election board. State Sen.
Clementa Pinckney and state Rep. Thayer Rivers
have asked the governor to appoint Charles Baker,
John Simmons, Eugene Hicks, Jimmy Daley, James
Rhodes Jr., Carl Tyler and Lillian
King.
They are to replace former board
chairman Lawrence Bowers, former vice chair
Barbara Pinckney and members Jack Lee, Sharon
Terry-Davis and Sneed.
Reporter Mark
Kreuzwieser can be reached at 726-6161 or
mark.kreuzwieser@lowcountrynow.com
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