Sumpter responds to criticisms of precinct activities

At Sumpter Township’s regular, in-person board meeting on Aug. 25, Clerk Esther Hurst and Trustee Tim Rush, who both are running for reelection in the Nov. 3 election, presented a defense of activities at Precinct 5 in the Aug. 4 primary election.
Clerk Hurst said criticisms have pointed at township officials, herself, and her staff and this has impacted the election inspector team. She said they followed election law.
She said allegations of throwing away of ballots is not true and many are looking for the truth.
“The current media is not the place to look,” Hurst said.
Trustee Rush said he has lived in the township for 30 years and this is the worst election year he’s ever seen, with false, criminal allegations.
He criticized the Independent for gladly publishing criticisms without a phone call to get the other side.
“Residents need to hear the truth,” Rush said. “I swore an oath … I’ve been falsely accused.”
He said Toni Clark said she personally saw him open the tabulating machine and removing and carrying out tapes. He directed Deputy Clerk Tony Burdick to run the surveillance tape from the precinct so it could be seen on the big screens in the meeting room.
Rush said the township traditionally allows people to take pictures of the election tape at all elections for as long as he can remember.
“This is happening at all the precincts,” he stated.
After the surveillance tape was run, Deputy Clerk Burdick ran the body-cam tape made when Police Officer Christopher Herrick responded to Clark’s 911 call. It showed him questioning Clark and Precinct 5 chairwoman Irene Woodell.
Woodell said she has done this for 8-10 years and she said she was told it’s OK for him to take a picture. “I usually hang it on the wall,” she said.
“No one touches the tabulator. It’s illegal… That’s why they keep hiring me, because I do it right,” she said.
Rush had the tape stopped and went on with his verbal statement.
“I never moved the tabulator in the hallway. I never touched the tabulator. I never took the tape. …This has been designed to damage my reputation,” Rush said.
He then complained about Jim Clark’s letter to the editor and the one written by Ronald Barrington Robinson, both published in the Independent.
Supervisor John Morgan, also running for reelection, praised Rush.
“We all love you because we know what you’ve done … Hold your head high,” he said, and the meeting room audience of more than 20 applauded.
Trustee Matthew Oddy, also running for reelection, apologized to Hurst and Rush for what they were going through. When he was through, the audience applauded again.
At the beginning of the meeting, Supervisor Morgan issued a statement, saying there was an unfortunate incident at the last meeting and this is a business meeting of a township board to keep the public informed and is not a question-and-answer forum. The public may give comments for three minutes, he said.
Morgan said at the last meeting there was a disruption and the speaker was given one admonition and then asked to leave. (He referred to Eric Partridge’s questions about where they were posting the call for bids for township projects. He said he has looked online at the township’s new newspaper of record and cannot find the postings anywhere.)
“The key word is ‘respect’,” Morgan said. “I hope he hears this through his mask … I would like an orderly meeting. Outbursts are totally unacceptable.”
In other business at the one-hour-and-13-minute meetings, the board:
• Approved the supervisor’s reappointment of Mary Sherwood to the planning commission with a term to expire Sept. 23, 2023;
• Approved the supervisor’s appointment of Vincent Warren to the Board of Review with a term to expire Jan. 1, 2022;
• Approved the planning commission’s recommendation for special land use of 23560 Sumpter Rd. to be utilized as a Large Adult Foster Care Facility for up to 20 residents. Applicant was Gina Freeman of Judd Road who told the board that the present use of the building houses mentally ill, who could wander off into nearby yards, but the new facility will not have mentally ill, but will house seniors, Alzheimer patients, and the handicapped and it will have 24-hour supervision and residents cannot leave the building. She said she expects the renovated building to be open in the spring. “We have to work on it to make it beautiful and cute,” she said;
• Approved purchase of six prep radios for the fire department at a cost not to exceed $13,323, as required in the union contract for a radio to be in each seat of a fire vehicle so each fire fighter has a radio;
• Approved moving Donna Stewart from an alternate Parks and Recreation Commission position to a full-time Parks and Recreation position;
• Heard Trustee Don Swinson announce the Parks and Recreation Commission is canceling all events it sponsors until further notice and since only ten people are allowed in indoor meetings, there will be no commission meetings until the first of the year. He said the last meeting of the commission was outside at Graham Park;
• Heard Mary Sherwood say she worked at Precinct 5 and is sorry and sick that their integrity has been impugned. The people of Sumpter Township are not country bumpkins, she said. “We know how to do an election. We have one goal only to give you a perfect election every time. … We were expecting Mr. Rush. We were told at our training he would be coming.” She said the only problem was he came early and the tape had not yet been taped to the wall for him to take his picture. “We had a perfect election … I just wanted to speak for the election people in case the public thinks we don’t know how to run an election.” Applause followed her remarks;
• Heard Mary Ban commend the board for bringing the issue out in the open and, “The truth shall reign.” She said people will see the disparaging things said over the years were trying to sow disunity. She said this shows how important the elections process is. She also noted the high brush is still around, especially at Willow and Sherwood roads. She thanked Trustee Rush and DPW Chief Ken Kunkle for painting the yellow line on the cement incline by the back door. She also said the Bake Shoppe was told about 15 years ago that sewers were coming to them. Ban also said she doesn’t believe in the mail-in voting system because there is “too much chance for fraud”;
• Heard Sharon Pokerwinski say she was scheduled to work as an Absentee Vote counter on Aug. 4, but there were people on Facebook who thought she shouldn’t be counting because she supported the incumbents. She said she stayed home on election day and didn’t count at all; and
• Heard Trustee Don LaPorte say years ago Ford Motor Co. gave him election day off with pay and he worked the polls. “I got educated at the polls. We followed protocol to the letter.” He said the polls were opened with the call out, “Hear ye, hear ye,” which surprised him. “I learned a lot about the process.” He suggested people volunteer their day at the polls to see how everything works. “See how organized they are and how passionate they are to get it right,” Trustee LaPorte said.
The video recording of the Aug. 25 meeting is available on the Sumpter Township web site.