The Georgia State Election Board has asked the state Attorney General to investigate whether former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed violated the state election laws based on a video showing him soliciting votes near a polling place, according to a report by Channel 2 Action News on Friday.
The Channel 2 report says that Reed was surprised by the board’s actions because the board’s own investigators had concluded no violation had occured.
“In early September, I received a letter from the State Elections Board informing me that this matter was resolved and no further action was required,” Reed told Channel 2 in statement. “This letter also stated that neither I, nor my counsel, needed to appear at the meeting on September 11, 2018. Accordingly, I was surprised to learn that the action discussed in your story was taken by the Board without me or my counsel being given notice or the opportunity to be heard on this matter.”
But the board showed that it felt the matter was serious when it voted to refer the matter to the attorney general last week.
Channel 2 reported in November that a video on Reed’s instagram account showed him telling people to vote for Keisha Lance Bottoms in the general election at an elementary school serving as a polling place.
“I’m Mayor Kasim Reed, here in Southwest Atlanta at Fickett Elementary School. And my wife, Sarah-Elisabeth, and my daughter, Maria Kristan, and I, we just voted for the next mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms,” Reed says in the video, according to the Channel 2 report.
According to Georgia law: “No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method on any day in which ballots are being cast within 150 feet of the outer edge of any building within which a polling place is established.”
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