NO CHARGE: ZONE ELECTION GROUP CLEARED OF VIOLATIONS

JACKSON -- Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle said Wednesday he will not file charges against the treasurer of the Elect-A-Neighbor Committee for alleged violations of state disclosure laws.

In a four-page explanation at the front of a 289-page document, Swingle said that he did not believe that Mary Ann "Miki" Gudermuth had any criminal intent when her committee omitted the proper disclaimer on its yard signs and newspaper advertisements.

In October, former Cape Girardeau city councilman Curtis Smith filed the complaint, which cited 11 violations of state campaign disclosure laws against the Elect-A-Neighbor Committee.

The Missouri Campaign Review Board forwarded the information on three of the 11 complaints to Swingle but did not make any recommendation.

"The board did not recommend that charges be filed," Swingle said Wednesday. "They referred the report to me asking if charges should be filed."

After instructing his investigator to interview all parties involved and reviewing the compiled data, Swingle decided not to file charges against Gudermuth.

"I felt that in reviewing the whole file, that no jury in the world would have convicted (Gudermuth) of anything," Swingle said. "There was no criminal intent in her actions.

"(Gudermuth) did not have sophisticated knowledge of the law and was hastily trying to comply with regulations she did not fully understand," Swingle said. "In my opinion, she did not knowingly violate any regulations."

Gudermuth served as the treasurer of the Elect-A-Neighbor Committee, which promoted a ballot initiative on city ward elections.

Voters overwhelmingly supported the ward election issue Nov. 3, which changed the city charter by dividing the city into six wards from which the council members will be elected in lieu of the current at-large system.

Smith claimed in his complaint that the group failed to properly identify printed election material, failed to have the proper disclaimer on yard signs and did not file a timely supplemental contribution report in connection with the general election, thereby violating the Campaign Finance Disclosure Law.

"The purpose of the Campaign Finance Disclosure Law is to enforce public disclosure of campaign contributions and sources, not to involve the prosecuting attorney in the political process," Swingle said. "It is not the role of a prosecutor to be used in a political squabble in an election."

Swingle's report said that the original complaint was made with the idea that the prosecuting attorney could somehow set aside the results of the election because of the violations of the Campaign Finance Law.

"In fact, the only decision the prosecutor can make is whether the person who violated the law should be prosecuted and punished by either jail or a fine," Swingle said. "A conviction of the law violation would have no effect on the validity of an election.

"A prosecutor's first obligation is to see that justice is done," he continued. "It would not be justice to charge Gudermuth with an offense in this case."

Gudermuth said Wednesday night that she felt vindicated by the announcement.

"There was no doubt that we were innocent," she said. "We are happy that (Swingle) was able to see through the some of the political punishment we were going through for the sake of speaking out on what we believed in.

"We were inexperienced; we knew what we wanted to do, but we didn't know the politically correct manner in which to go about doing it," she continued. "All we wanted was someone to hear our voices, to be elected from people in our area, by people in our area, to serve the needs of the residents as well as the needs of the city."

Gudermuth said she would encourage other people to stand up and speak for what they feel is right and not submit to political pressures.

"We all should have the freedom to speak without retaliation," she said. "I can almost assure you that nothing would have been said about the way we ran our campaign if the proposition had failed. We had bothered the political elite of Cape Girardeau, and they were punishing us for it."

But Smith said Wednesday that he had no intention of getting Gudermuth into trouble when he filed the complaint ... he only wanted the facts about the campaign to come out.

"It was not my intent to send anyone to jail," Smith said. "Instead, we wanted to get full disclosure to the voters so that they could make an intelligent decision.

"After this whole thing happened, I found out that this wasn't the way to get the vote nullified," Smith said. "So now we plan to pursue other avenues to do just that."