Arkansas' high court overturns order in election case

Jefferson County panel wins appeal

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Jefferson County Election Commission was not required to allow an election coordinator access to information and resources because the coordinator had no legal duties to perform regarding elections.

Writing for the majority, Justice Courtney Hudson Goodson wrote that election coordinators had no statutory duties and that Circuit Judge Robert H. Wyatt Jr. erred when he issued a writ of mandamus ordering the election commission to give the election coordinator, hired by the county judge, access to county information and property so he could perform his duties.

A writ of mandamus is issued to enforce an established right or to enforce the performance of a duty, Goodson noted in the opinion. The purpose of the writ is not to establish a right, she added.

"Appellants [the Jefferson County Election Commission and commissioners Stu Soffer and Michael Adams] argue that because the EC [election coordinator William Fox] has no established or legal duty to perform any functions associated with an election unless it is delegated by the [election commission], a writ of mandamus was inappropriate in this case. We agree," Goodson wrote.

According to the opinion, Henry "Hank" Wilkins IV, then county judge of Jefferson County, sought the writ in Circuit Court on July 14.

Wilkins, a former state legislator, resigned from office and pleaded guilty in federal court last month to conspiring to accept more than $80,000 in bribes in exchange for influencing state legislation and transactions. He is awaiting sentencing.

Wilkins filed for the writ because the election commissioners refused to work with Fox, the opinion said. The refusal had caused problems in meeting deadlines for a recent tax election, and Wilkins was concerned about meeting deadlines in a school board election.

Commissioners claimed Fox had interfered with a previous election in Pine Bluff and wouldn't stop, forcing Soffer to call the sheriff, the opinion said. Soffer also claimed he could perform most of the election-related tasks and commissioners decided they didn't need Fox.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Josephine Linker Hart wrote that Goodson failed to mention in the majority opinion that Wilkins complained that the commissioners had missed an election deadline because they refused to carry out their duties until they were paid for services they claimed to have performed outside official commission meetings.

Commissioners prevented Fox from carrying out the duties they were refusing to perform, to the point of denying him access to county property, Hart wrote.

"There is a profound distinction between the commissioners' simply declining to work with the coordinator and the commissioners' affirmatively preventing the coordinator from performing the responsibilities the county judge hired him to perform," she wrote.

After a hearing on the writ, Wyatt ruled that Soffer and Adams prevented Fox from performing his duties as election coordinator and ordered them to stop interfering with him doing his job.

He ordered the commissioners to provide Fox with '"all necessary keys, logins, passwords, data, information and any other items necessary to facilitate the election process,"' Goodson quoted from Wyatt's order.

Justice Rhonda Wood also dissented from the majority, writing that she found no error in Wyatt's ruling. It was a highly political dispute, Wood wrote, and Wyatt simply ordered the election commission to do its job to ensure the election proceeded "without impediment."

Wood also pointed out the lack of clarity over the legal relationships of the county judge, election coordinator and the election commission, which has surfaced before in Arkansas. She encouraged action by the Legislature "before a future election is compromised."

State Desk on 05/25/2018

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