Andrew Bell, who last week lost the race for DeKalb County Commission District 3 by 52 percentage points, has filed a lawsuit against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the executive director of DeKalb County elections and each individual member of the state and county elections boards, calling for a new election.
Representing himself, Bell alleged the DeKalb elections office changed the advance voting dates for the Dec. 3 runoff without properly notifying the public, illegally changed advance voting locations, didn’t count military and overseas absentee ballots, allowed a vehicle with his opponent’s logo to park less than 10 feet from a polling place and provided his campaign an incomplete list of precincts.
Bell also took issue with the county’s decision not to hold the special election in the spring, saying residents of districts 3 and 7 were deprived of representation on the county commission for too long.
“The Contested Election is fraught with misconduct, fraud and irregularities” enough to change the results, the lawsuit says.
Bell did not respond to an email seeking comment. The state attorney general’s office, which represents the state elections board, declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokesperson for the DeKalb County Voter Registration & Elections Office said officials there do not comment on pending litigation.
The lawsuit says the websites for the DeKalb County Board of Registration and Elections and the Georgia Secretary of State listed Nov. 25-27 as the early voting dates for the runoff. Bell said he paid for signs, stickers, door hangers and other campaign materials with those dates on them. On Nov. 12, the DeKalb elections board voted to add weekend early voting dates beginning Nov. 23, the lawsuit says.
The county did not post the dates, times and locations for early voting “in a prominent location in the county” as required by law, the lawsuit says.
Nicole Massiah defeated Bell with 76% of the vote. More than 7,000 people voted in the runoff.
Bell ran for the same seat two years ago and lost to Larry Johnson by more than 50 percentage points. He filed a pro se lawsuit then, too, asking for a recount because of errors in another district that triggered a recount there.
This year’s District 3 race was a special election after Johnson resigned to run for DeKalb County CEO. He lost to former District 7 commissioner Lorraine Cochran-Johnson.
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