A St. Francis County circuit judge has ruled that petitions calling to oust Hughes Mayor Grady Collum were certified after a deadline and ordered that votes cast in Tuesday's recall election not be counted.
The group seeking Collum's removal from office turned petitions in Aug. 9. County Clerk Emily Holley certified signatures Aug. 22 -- three days after a 10-day deadline to do so as set by state law.
Circuit Judge Kathleen Bell issued a declaratory judgment Tuesday and said even though Hughes ballots contained Collum's recall issue, no votes will be counted.
"I think the judge was proper with her order based on the circumstances," said Collum, who was elected mayor in November 2014. "I was sorry it had to come to this, but I guess it had to."
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Hughes Alderman Rudolph Robinson circulated petitions and gathered more than 400 signatures asking that Collum be voted out of office, Holley said. Hughes, in the southeast corner of St. Francis County, has a voting-age population of fewer than 1,200.
Robinson turned in petitions Aug. 9, but Holley stamped them as received Aug. 10. Holley, who is retiring as county clerk Dec. 31, certified 308 names Aug. 22.
Collum questioned the names, saying several appeared to have been signed by the same person. Several voters' names appeared on the petition two or three times as well, he said.
He said the petition did not include reasons why people wanted him removed as mayor.
Collum filed legal action seeking the removal of the issue Sept. 21, citing Arkansas Code Annotated 14-42-119 (1) (a) which allows the clerk 10 days upon receiving petitions to determine the sufficiency of them. The state requires at least 25 percent of the town's qualified electors be certified in order to call the election.
"I did what I thought was right," Collum said of filing the lawsuit. "I was hoping the judge would make the right decision."
His action named Holley and St. Francis Election Commissioners Frederick Freeman, Christopher Oswalt and Tammy Beck as defendants.
In her ruling, Bell wrote that "the certificate of sufficiency here was not filed by the clerk timely, as it was not executed until Aug. 22. At this point in the election cycle, all provisions of the election law are mandatory.
More than 2,000 early voting ballots were cast in St. Francis County as of Thursday afternoon, a deputy clerk said.
She said she could not itemize where each ballot came from and did not know how many early votes were cast in Hughes.
"I wasn't worried about this. I would still be able to live if I was voted out," said Collum, who owns a medical clinic in Marion. He has also served as Hughes' mayor for 12 years in the past.
"I've been doing city business all during this," he said. "I didn't get excited about it. You're going to have detractors no matter what you do. I did what I thought was right."
State Desk on 11/04/2016