Names of the dead voters on petition raise concerns

~ The signatures are the latest problem in St. Louis election misdeeds.

ST. LOUIS -- St. Louis election officials said Friday they have launched a fraud investigation after receiving signatures from dead voters and addresses that matched vacant lots in a failed petition effort to recall a city alderman.

The false information is the latest problem for a city that's been plagued by election misdeeds in recent years.

About 3,700 signatures were submitted on a petition to spark a recall vote against Democratic Alderman Jeffrey Boyd of the 22nd Ward. About 1,600 were needed to certify the petition, but not enough valid signatures were received, said St. Louis Board of Elections chair Ed Martin.

Martin, a Republican, said it was too soon to say how many of the signatures were fraudulent, but that at least six belonged to dead people. During a news conference, he held up a program from the funeral Mass for Leodora F. Davis-Jackson, whose signature was on the petition.

"Miss Jackson, God rest her, has been dead for four years," he said.

Jackson's sister, Lillian Harris, said by telephone that having her sister's name forged opened up an old wound. "I just think they're crooked," she said of whoever submitted the false names. "They're thieves, liars and crooks."

Martin said the petition will be investigated for 20 days, and the findings turned over to federal and city authorities for possible prosecution. He did not name any potential suspects.

Election workers have already visited neighborhoods and heard from people who said their names had been forged, or found addresses that matched boarded up buildings, Martin said.

"We will not tolerate this. It's unacceptable," he said.

To trigger a recall vote, a petition needs a number of signatures equal to 20 percent of registered voters in the ward at the time of the last mayoral election.

Two former aldermen, Kenneth Jones and Jay Ozier, led the effort to remove Boyd. Boyd defeated Ozier by eight votes in 2003, and Boyd said he believes the recall was prompted by "petty politics and sour grapes."

Phone calls to Jones and Ozier were not returned.

"I feel justice has been rendered today," said Boyd. "I think the whole process has been a fraud since the beginning."

The investigation is just the latest for a city that has had a number of election problems in recent years.

"We're worried about when people hear this, they'll say, 'Oh, it's St. Louis city,'" Martin said. But he said election officials are committed to getting new systems in place, so that people instead will say in 2006 and 2008, "Look how far they've come."

In February, the federal government ended its monitoring of city elections, five years after finding that hundreds of people couldn't vote because of insufficient staff and equipment at the polls.

The Justice Department said at the time that voting in St. Louis had produced only minor glitches since the 2000 general election.

In that election, a city judge ordered polls kept open after 7 p.m. in response to Democratic lawsuits charging that hundreds of voters were turned away. An appeals court swiftly overruled the judge and closed the polls, but Republicans said many votes were illegally cast.

Last December, a judge called six people involved in vote fraud stemming from the 2001 St. Louis mayor's election part of the "demise of democracy."

All six pleaded guilty to crimes, including signing the names of friends, relatives, a prison inmate and five dead people on voter registration cards.