Detroit News exclusive report
Some Detroit voters are incapacitated, without valid addresses, raising question of mayoral election's fairness.
In the recent election, she received more votes than any other candidate -- 69,679 votes compared to 60,117 for Freman Hendrix; 45,783 for Kwame Kilpatrick and 51,871 for Maryann Mahaffey. Her office was one of the few that did not receive cuts amid Detroit's budget crisis. In addition to her normal budget, she spent $69,683 in 2003-04 on $10-per-hour election workers that visit nursing homes, group homes and hospitals to help people with their absentee ballots. Currie has been the subject of state and media reports for years that bring into question her election practices. For the past several years, Currie has been assigned a full-time driver from the Detroit Police Department after protesters began showing up at her home on East Willis. In addition to her residence, she owns 11 rental properties on the east side. Related reports |
Currie, 74, is a powerful Detroit politician with a long history in local government. She was elected city clerk in 1993. Prior to her election, she was the longest-serving member of the Wayne County Commission, with 20 years on the board.
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A Detroit News investigation raises serious questions about the handling of absentee ballots under Detroit City Clerk Jackie Currie as the city prepares to choose a mayor, City Council and school board Nov. 8.
Currie has been accused of irregular election practices in several lawsuits, and a review of election results, property records and databases of registered voters uncovered procedures that experts and other election officials described as questionable.
Among findings by News reporters were ballots cast by people registered to vote at abandoned and long-demolished buildings; a master voter list with 380,000 incorrect names and addresses -- including people who have died or moved out of the city; and a practice of hand-delivering ballots from senior citizens and disabled voters that were filled out in private meetings with Currie's paid election workers.
If the mayoral race came down to a close vote demanding a recount of absentee ballots, the result could be chaotic.
But the most poignant findings were stories from those in nursing homes who had recently voted absentee.
Among them is Charles B. Allen, a resident at the Passion Caring Home for the Elderly who stared blankly one day last week when asked to name the mayor of Detroit. He's never heard of Kwame Kilpatrick and can't recall whether he voted in August.
"I just don't know," Allen said. Six years ago, a Wayne County probate judge declared the 87-year-old legally incapacitated due to dementia and Alzheimer's.
But according to city records, he voted in the August primary by absentee ballot.
He did so with the aid of Rose Johnson, one of City Clerk Jackie Currie's 50 election assistants, who met with him in a private room and helped complete his ballot, according to nursing home owner Gena Payne. Johnson declined to speak to a reporter.
Other acute problems exist. The August primary was "a step backwards" for the city, said Wayne County Director of Elections Candace Jenkins.
State law requires cities and townships to turn in election results to the county by 11 a.m. the morning after the election, and 42 of Wayne County's 43 municipalities complied. But Detroit's results were not turned in until nine days after the election, Jenkins said.
When the results arrived, eight of 24 poll districts and 52 of 100 absentee ballot districts had irregularities; mainly, they recorded more or fewer votes than names taken down on election night. When two separate recounts were requested by losing City Council candidates, county canvassers deemed 40 of 107 precincts selected for recount couldn't be recounted due to irregularities such as broken ballot box seals and numbers of ballots not matching the number of votes recorded on election night. That meant candidates had no way of determining the legitimacy of the vote in nearly 40 percent of Detroit's precincts selected for recount.
"You can convict her of running a shoddy election," said Mark Grebner of Practical Political Consulting of East Lansing. Grebner has studied Detroit's election results for 30 years and compiles a list of voters that he sells to political candidates. "The big thing is, these people are incompetent. They do things that don't make sense. We find things all the time that are appalling."
Currie refused to explain any of the problems uncovered by The News or outlined in court cases.
She, along with her deputy, Vernon Clark, denied there are any problems with the vote in Detroit.
"Prove it," Currie said. "P-R-O-V-E."
In the past, Currie has defended her hiring of assistants as an important outreach program to encourage Detroiters to vote. She says federal law inhibits any efforts to purge the city's voter rolls, since no names can be deleted without a death certificate or proof that the voter has registered elsewhere.
The Detroit News probe found:
• In the August primary, Currie's assistants hand-delivered 4,560 ballots to the clerk's office while another 3,314 were delivered either by one of Currie's election officials, the voter or a member of the voter's immediate family, according to the clerk's office. Absentee ballots are supposed to be mailed in by the voter, unless there is a good reason not to, in which case state law outlines close family members who can deliver the ballots for the voter.
While election officials are permitted to deliver absentee ballots to polling places, they are allowed to only when called and asked by the voter. State officials have informed Currie that the practice of picking up ballots from voters is not advisable nor is it allowed by state law, according to a review of state documents.
• State officials have recorded concerns with Currie's handling of elections for years. Currently, the state and Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett are battling Currie to get her to implement the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
Under Michigan's implementation of the federal act, the county has selected a vendor to provide state-of-the-art voting equipment. If the city accepts the county's vendor, federal funds will pay for the equipment in an effort to create unified countywide voting systems. But Currie has told the City Council she prefers a separate vendor. The council has adopted two resolutions supporting her efforts.
If Currie does not apply for the equipment grant by Monday, the city will have to spend $4 million to purchase its own equipment in order to comply with the federal law. A review of memos between state election officials and Currie indicates that Currie similarly battled against implementing optical scan equipment and the statewide effort to keep qualified voter lists.
• At the Passion Caring Home for the Elderly, three people who voted absentee in the August primary could not name the mayor of Detroit or recall having voted when interviewed Thursday. Each was helped by Currie's election assistant in a private room. Of eight recent absentee ballots mailed to the home for the general election next month, seven of the ballot recipients have been declared legally incapacitated by Wayne County Probate Court judges and suffer from dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
• People who were mailed absentee voter applications by Currie's office and later voted by absentee ballot have voter registration addresses of two long-abandoned nursing homes, the LaSalle Nursing Home on West Grand Boulevard and the Woodward Nursing Center.
• In one case, Joseph Koziara voted by absentee ballot. His application for the ballot was addressed to his registered voting address, 3456 Martin, a building that was demolished in 2002 and remains a vacant lot, according to city records. Currie's office has addressed ballot applications to demolished and vacant buildings. In one case, 34 applications were sent to a juvenile detention center for teenagers that need to be hospitalized.
• Two people in unrelated civil cases filed against Currie have given sworn statements that they witnessed Currie's workers filling out empty absentee ballots after the polls had closed. One of the cases is pending. In the other, a judge ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to invalidate the election in question.
• In a 2003 race between Cheryl Cushingberry and Keith Williams for the Wayne County Commission, a fire broke out in the Detroit clerk's counting room for absentee ballots. When people were allowed back in, a recount was impossible because ballot boxes and results had been tampered with, according to court records. Cushingberry later challenged the results, alleging absentee votes had been manipulated.
Absentee voting has played a major role in recent Detroit elections. In the August primary, 44,000 people voted by absentee ballot out of 137,000 votes cast overall -- an absentee rate of 32 percent.
In April, 2003 when Joann Watson faced off against Gil Hill in a special election to fill a City Council seat, Watson won by just 2,939 votes. Of the 79,912 people who voted in the race, 32,799, or more than 41 percent, voted by absentee ballot.
The national average for voting by absentee ballots is 14 percent, according to the United States Election Assistance Commission, while Detroit's average hovers at more than 30 percent. In some races, more than 60 percent of people voted absentee.
Currie's problems with absentee voting go back decades. She and her late husband, Charmie Currie Jr., were charged in 1964 with conspiring to solicit 21 people to sign applications for absentee ballots and later advising them on how to mark their ballots. Currie's husband pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge, and the prosecutor dismissed charges against Currie on grounds that "she acted out of love for her husband."
For years, city residents and political activists, along with state and Wayne County election officials, have tried to get answers about why it has been impossible to recount absentee ballots.
"There have always been problems. We just want some answers," said the Rev. Malik Shabazz, founder of the New Black Panther Nation/New Marcus Garvey Movement.
In 2004, Currie filed a personal protection order against Shabazz after he and about 20 others picketed her home to protest what they believed was manipulation of absentee ballots to determine election results.
"What's this about? She just wants to keep herself and her friends in power," Shabazz said.
For the Nov. 8 election, Wayne County Chief Judge Mary Beth Kelly ruled that monitors be appointed to oversee the handling of absentee ballots. Kelly also barred Currie's use of assistants called ambassadors, but on Friday, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the ambassadors could still be used.
The appeals court didn't say whether Currie's use of ambassadors was legal or illegal but simply that Kelly didn't have technical authority to bar the ambassadors as part of a contempt of court proceeding.
The rulings stem from a suit filed in August by failed City Council candidate Maureen Taylor, who alleged she lost a spot on the November general election ballot because of absentee ballot fraud.
As the lawsuit proceeded, Kelly issued a verbal order barring Currie from sending out about 150,000 absentee ballot applications to city residents. Currie disobeyed that order and later invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself when asked by the judge to explain her actions.
At one point, Currie said she did not remember being in the judge's courtroom when Kelly told her not to mail the applications.
Under state election law, an absentee ballot must be either mailed or hand-delivered by the voter. If a voter needs help filling out the ballot -- if he or she is blind, for example -- the person helping must sign the back of the ballot envelope.
But nobody is sure how the assistants conduct their work, raising questions about the safety and security of 8,000 or more ballots in every election.
"There is no accountability," said Stephen Wasinger, one of the lawyers challenging the election process on behalf of Maureen Taylor, the City Council candidate.
You can reach David Josar at (313) 222-2073 or djosar@detnews.com.