July 19, 2007 — The Joint Boards of Elections passed a motion Thursday declaring they have no authority to rule on candidate Harry Daniel’s dispute of the official June 12 Constitutional Convention special-election results.
The meeting was held via a telephone conference call with each of the two boards in their respective offices. It was called at the last minute Wednesday after V.I. Superior Court Judge James Carroll III ruled that a decision had to be made on Daniel’s appeal by the joint boards before the issue could be heard in court. Daniel had to exhaust all administrative options before the court could take up the matter, Carroll ruled. A joint boards meeting was scheduled for July 13 but canceled for lack of a quorum.
A hearing will be held at 10 a.m. Friday in the V.I. Superior Court.
At Thursday’s meeting, St. Thomas-St. John District board member Arturo Watlington Jr. questioned St. Croix board members’ involvement in Daniel’s appeal process. “Is it the Joint Boards’ position to overturn a district-chair decision?” he said.
“Mr. Boschulte, the chair of the St. Thomas-St. John board wrote a letter advising Daniel he had 10 days to appeal to the joint boards,” said St. Croix board member Rupert Ross. “It has been put on the record that Daniel must exhaust his administrative appeals before the court can hear it.”
Watlington objected.
“We disagree,” he said. “We certified the election. … We never saw the letter Boschulte wrote, but the letter is erroneous. Maybe he wrote it because he voted against certifying the election.”
Although Watlington said he believes the only way to resolve the issue is by the court, one of the reasons a joint boards meeting was called was because of the “misunderstanding” that Daniel had not yet “exhausted” his appeals to the Elections board. “I believe it is based so the court will not have procedural issues,” Watlington said.
Board member Colette White-Amaro added, “The St. Thomas-St. John board has already taken our posture on the issue.”
Daniel’s attorney, Clive Rivers, was not present at the meeting, but he sent a representative from his office to the St. Thomas Elections office. Daniel himself appeared at the St. Croix Elections office. As a final step in his complaint process against the election results, Daniel took the issue to Superior Court on Tuesday.
In his legal complaint, Daniel said the design of the special election ballot for St. Thomas-St. John prevented the selection of more than two delegates from St. John. This is contrary to the law, he argued. The St. Thomas-St. John ballot states: “Select no more than 2” above the list of St. John candidates, whereas the law states “not fewer than two delegates shall be residents of St. John” (emphasis added).
In addition to the ballot change, when certifying the election, the St. Thomas-St. John board also chose to limit the number of delegates from St. John to a maximum of two, regardless of the number of votes received.
Daniel filed suit against the Joint Boards of Elections, the St. Thomas-St. John Board of Elections and Supervisor of Elections John Abramson Jr. Rivers maintains that under the law, all 13 delegates for St. Thomas-St. John could have been residents of St. John if the votes had been cast that way.
“I’ve never known of a separate St. John district in my life, and I think it is an injustice,” Daniel said before the meeting Thursday.
The joint boards declined the opportunity to weigh in on the dispute.
“It is my opinion the matter is incorrectly before the joint boards,” said St. Croix board member Raymond Williams. “Title 18 of the Virgin Islands code does not provide the joint boards with the power to rule on this.”
Williams later put that opinion in the form of a motion, and the joint boards voted in favor, resolving that they do not have jurisdiction over the matter.
The St. Thomas-St. John district board members met July 12 to hear Daniel’s complaint that the redesign of the Constitutional Convention ballot cost him a spot as a delegate. Members questioned why Daniel never came forward with his concerns before the special elections. Rivers told the board that his client had not seen the ballot until the day of the election. Board members heard his concerns, then voted to move forward with the certification of the election.
The next day, Rivers sent Abramson a letter of appeal on the board’s decision.
“While Mr. Daniel placed eighth in the elections, he was excluded from a seat in the fifth Constitutional Convention because two other individuals received more votes,” Rivers wrote. He asked the board to either add Daniel as a delegate or nullify the St. Thomas-St. John district election.
The ballot was redesigned just one week before the election, after St. Thomas-St. John district board members brought forth concerns that listing at-large delegates from the two districts — St. Thomas-St. John and St. Croix — in one list would confuse voters. Enabling law says that four delegates shall be elected at large by the qualified voters of the Virgin Islands from the Virgin Islands as a whole.
Of the four, two must be residents of the district of St. Croix, and two of St. Thomas-St. John. The joint boards approved the ballot change, separating St. Croix from St. Thomas at-large candidates. The St. Thomas-St. John board changed the St. Thomas-St. John ballot separately, without input from the St. Croix board. Daniel’s suit applies only to the St. Thomas-St. John ballot.
Abramson opposed the changes at the time, arguing that nothing about the original ballot conflicted with the enabling legislation.
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