Legal woes dog clerk's staff
Some have criminal records, others are behind on taxes
November 18, 2005
Email this Print this BY JOHN BEBOW and JIM SCHAEFER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
A record of problems in clerk's office
Some Detroit election workers have had legal troubles and others have failed to pay taxes in recent years, court and city records show. Some of the cases at a glance:
Jackie Currie, city clerk: Currie and her husband, Charmie Currie Jr., were charged in 1964 with conspiring to tell voters to make fraudulent applications for absentee ballots, a felony. Her now-deceased husband, a former Wayne County commissioner, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.
A prosecutor dismissed the case against Jackie Currie, saying "she acted out of love for her husband."
Currie's absentee voter program is under federal investigation.
Charmie Currie III, city clerk employee: Currie, whose mother is Jackie Currie, worked as a get-out-the-vote ambassador, assisting absentee voters. He has convictions in four larceny or stolen property cases. Court records indicate a 15-year-old open misdemeanor warrant in Detroit charging him, under an alias, with attempted larceny.
Davina Vant, elections technician: The daughter of city Elections Director Gloria Williams, she has been convicted of domestic violence and of kidnapping her daughter from the girl's father.
Olline McElroy, city clerk employee: Also an absentee vote ambassador and treasurer of Jackie Currie's recent campaign, she filed for bankruptcy three weeks before the Nov. 8 election.
Her debts included $27,000 in unpaid state and federal income taxes.
JOHN BEBOW
The office that oversaw Detroit's troubled election this month employed several people with criminal records and others who had unpaid state and federal income taxes, records show.
City Clerk Jackie Currie's son, a convicted criminal who worked as a get-out-the-vote ambassador, has been wanted for 15 years on a warrant charging him with attempted larceny, according to court records.
Elections Director Gloria Williams' daughter, an elections technician, has recent convictions for domestic violence and for kidnapping her daughter from the child's father. In court papers, she claimed she was exempt from prosecution and abided "by the great seal of the Zodiac Constitution."
In addition, an elections clerk was sentenced to probation this year for attempted heroin possession.
The backgrounds raise fresh questions about the hiring and management practices of the city elections office under Currie, who leaves office in January after a 12-year reign. Her office is under federal investigation for its handling of absentee ballots.
Janice Winfrey, who defeated Currie in this month's election, expressed concern about the backgrounds of staffers identified by the Free Press.
"If you have people lacking integrity working for you, you can't trust that they would be properly ensuring that Detroit voters are not disenfranchised," Winfrey said. "You certainly wouldn't want those people carrying ballots or overseeing the election."
Scrutiny of the office she inherits is not likely to end soon. The city's election process will be under a microscope in next year's gubernatorial election, as political party operatives monitor Detroit's voting process in the bid by Republicans to unseat Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat.
State law does not set qualifications for elections workers -- the public is left to rely on the judgment of local officials who do the hiring.
Earlier this month, Jackie Currie told the Free Press she was "comfortable" with the backgrounds of her part-time ambassadors who gathered absentee ballots, often from enfeebled seniors living in nursing homes.
Williams, who as the elections director reports to Currie, defended the quality of her 122-person staff.
"A lot of people have problems in their backgrounds," Williams said. "What are they supposed to do?"
Financial struggles
Recent bankruptcy filings and other court records show that two of Currie's ambassadors and two elections department staffers had unpaid income taxes totaling $31,000.
For example, Olline McElroy, the treasurer of Jackie Currie's recent unsuccessful campaign, is an employee of the clerk's office, a Project Vote ambassador and self-described election night trouble-shooter.
McElroy filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 16, listing $27,000 in unpaid state and federal income taxes.
"I got behind in my taxes and I'm paying it," McElroy said. "I didn't bring my personal life to work."
Charmie Currie, the clerk's son, paid off a $1,016 tax debt to the state in late 2004, according to court documents.
He also has been arrested five times in the Detroit area since 1977 in larceny and stolen property cases for things like the theft of hubcaps and record albums from a Montgomery Ward store in Detroit, court records show. Charmie Currie, 50, of Detroit pleaded guilty in four of the five cases and received probation each time.
36th District Court records in Detroit indicate Charmie Currie gave police a false name in the fifth case and has been wanted on an outstanding warrant for misdemeanor larceny since 1990 under that alias.
He could not be reached for comment. His mother also could not be reached.
Davina Vant, 32, the daughter of Gloria Williams, pleaded no contest in January to parental kidnapping. Court records show that on June 25, 2004, Vernon Williams, the father of Vant's then-11-year-old daughter, gave the girl to Gloria Williams for a two-day visitation.
When Vant failed to return the girl to her father, he discovered that the child was with Vant in Florida and filed a missing person's report. She was placed on probation.
In 2003, Vant pleaded guilty in Detroit's 36th District Court to hitting her daughter's father in the head with a cell phone during a dispute.
Further troubles
The Free Press review of court records found numerous elections workers who had run-ins with the law, and six with convictions. Among them were:
Derrick Fails, 24, an elections department storekeeper, pleaded guilty in 2002 to attempting to carry a concealed weapon. Police stopped him while he was in a car with a .38 revolver. He declined comment Thursday.
Aaron Hyde, 28, an elections clerical assistant, has convictions for attempted possession of heroin in 2004 and for domestic violence in 2000.
Hyde did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.
McElroy, Jackie Currie's campaign treasurer, also donated $170 this year to Currie's re-election campaign. In fact, city elections supervisors directly responsible for assuring a fair election also contributed to Currie's campaign, raising questions about their neutrality.
Deputy City Clerk Daniel Baxter, who oversaw the counting of absentee ballots on election night, gave Currie's campaign $750.
Elections Director Williams, who is embroiled in a lengthy state-supervised effort to clear up numerous glitches in the vote count, contributed $750. Deputy Elections Director Isa Azzouz gave Currie $450.
"I am an elections official, but also as a private citizen I have a right to support any candidate of my choice," Azzouz said Tuesday.
Baxter echoed the sentiment.
State elections law does not prohibit elections workers from making campaign contributions. But some elections watchdogs frown on it.
"There should be a separation between the people who administer our elections and the people who are campaigning," said Ryan O'Donnell, communications director for the Center for Voting and Democracy, based in Washington, D.C.
The Detroit Board of Canvassers, which certifies election results, is scheduled to meet with city elections staff and state officials again today to sort out discrepancies in precinct vote totals, data entry and computer coding and other election-related problems. If the city canvassers cannot certify the vote by next Tuesday, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers may take over the process.
Elections observers want quick reforms from Winfrey, the new clerk, to assure the Detroit Elections Department can endure the scrutiny of a close gubernatorial election next year.
"What we need is a new group of people to step up and take responsibility to assure our elections run smoothly," said Vince Keenan, a regular poll watcher and director of Publius.org, a Detroit-based, nonpartisan, online voter education group.
Contact JOHN BEBOW at 313-222-8851 or jbebow@freepress.com. Contact JIM SCHAEFER at 313- |
