Alexander County replaces clerk

CAIRO, Ill. -- Alexander County commissioners chose a temporary county clerk Tuesday with only a week to go before an election that will select a new Cairo mayor and city council. The decision, made by two commissioners (a third was absent), came as a poll watcher and some candidates are raising questions about the legitimacy of absentee and early voting in the contests.

Nancy Kline, a longtime staff worker in the Alexander County Assessor's office, will run the clerk's office for 30 days, commission Chairman Mike Caldwell said. She replaces Kent Thomas, who was appointed last summer when Gloria Patton resigned over health problems.

Thomas himself has health problems that he needs to address, Caldwell said. Thomas has been absent from the office for weeks at a time since he began the four-year term he won unopposed in the November election.

The selection of Kline was made in an emergency meeting, Caldwell said, with himself, Commissioner Rollie Matlock and State's Attorney Jeff Farris in attendance. Commissioner Angela Greenwell, who was notified of the meeting Monday night by Alexander County sheriff's deputies, was absent, he said.

The election will be fair, and experienced staff in the clerk's office have been handling the work well, Caldwell said. The state Board of Elections has promised to send observers with lengthy election experience to Cairo next Tuesday to keep tabs on any problems, he said.

"Every election you are going to run into a little snag," Caldwell said. "But we have been in constant contact with the state Board of Elections, and I feel confident. I know people are worried."

After the election, Caldwell said, commissioners will chose a permanent replacement who will serve until the November 2008 election. Kline said she's not sure she wants the job, but she said the office is fine.

"We are pretty busy," she said. "The girls here are good, so I think it is going pretty well."

Greenwell, however, is not as confident. She stayed away from the meeting because she received notice when a deputy visited her home at 11:33 p.m., she said. Greenwell, with assistance from numerous other people in Cairo, has been meticulously documenting voting practices in the Cairo city election she characterizes as questionable.

"We have gone since the primary election without a county clerk, and then all of a sudden we have to have an emergency meeting," Greenwell said. "It just didn't make a lot of sense to me."

As of the close of business Tuesday, 361 people had cast absentee or early ballots in the election. The election will name a new mayor to replace Paul Farris, who lost the Feb. 27 primary, and will put at least three newcomers on the six-member council. The city of 3,600 people at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers has been in political turmoil for four years as the current council members have battled Farris on almost every facet of city business.

The turnout of absentee and early balloting is either 13.1 percent or 11.5 percent of the registered voters in Cairo, depending on which figure for total registration is correct. Greenwell said she received a complete voter list from the county clerk's office April 3 that showed 2,744 voters. A week later, she said, the state elections board figures showed 3,153 voters.

Both figures are higher than the total population of people older than 18 -- 2,529 -- from the 2000 census.

James Wisniewski, defeated in the primary for a council seat, has been watching the clerk's office as voters walk in to cast absentee or early ballots. He is watching on behalf of Karl Klein, who faces Judson Childs in the mayor's race.

Childs could not be reached for comment.

He said he has challenged two early voters. Early voters are only a small share of the total ballots cast so far.

Wisniewski said he has been keeping careful track of the absentees, and said he has identified numerous questionable votes. "One person changed their registration address from a burned out house to a parking lot," he said. "They did vote, but it is still in the box. That will be challenged."

The large numbers of absentees are puzzling, Klein said, because absentee voting is reserved for people who will be out of town on election day. Many of the people voting absentee will be in town, he said.

Prior to the Feb. 17 primary, Greenwell and those helping her reviewed the legitimacy of every registered voter. They said they found people registered at properties with no water or electric service, sometimes in burned out houses and sometimes from no house at all.

To follow up that effort, she said, close to 400 certified letters have been mailed to those addresses, the majority of which have been returned as undeliverable. The extra step was needed, she said, because challenges in February were dismissed by election judges who said that having no utilities wasn't proof enough that the voter was not living in the location they claimed.

"They said not everybody can afford utilities," she said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

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