RSS Feed |
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
Foe Had Invalid Petitions
Slates' Tallies Mr. Toussaint's slate had 12,477 valid signatures. Rail and Bus United with 11,915, wound up second and will be placed underneath One Union on the ballot. The Fresh Start slate headed by Michael Carrube came in third with approximately 4,700 signatures; the Union Democracy slate headed by Ainsley Stewart finished fourth with 3,191; and an Independent Slate headed by Anthony Staley was last with 1,118 signatures. Mr. Toussaint Nov. 9 issued a debate invitation to his newly-certified challengers, but it's unclear whether Mr. Roberts will participate. He already declined an earlier debate request from the incumbent.
Local 100's neutral election monitor, Barbara Deinhardt, has overseen the union's nominating process since 1998. Mr. Roberts's slate lost thousands of signatures in her final ruling after it was revealed that three nominating petitioners misrepresented their role in witnessing signatures. Finds Evidence of Lying Ms. Deinhardt stated in her report that "I must conclude that [a key signature witness for Rail and Bus United] has not been truthful in his statements." She disqualified most of the signatures obtained for Rail and Bus United by Harry Wills, who is running for an executive board position on the slate. Challengers had three days to file an appeal of her decision. As of press time, only Rail and Bus United had done so. About 900 petitions were filed by the five slates, with more than 43,000 signatures presented. Union members are permitted to sign the petitions of multiple slates.
Process of Elimination The election committee that worked with Ms. Deinhardt eliminated objections about duplicate signatures by entering the I.D. numbers of all the signatories submitted for Rail and Bus United and One Union, the two slates with the most challenges. It then ran a computer query to identify all repeat signatures. Rail and Bus United had 582 duplicates; One Union had 764. Those amounts were deducted from their tallies. Ms. Deinhardt also considered challenges to signatures that used the last four digits of a Social Security number for identification purposes. Although rules called for entire Social Security or pass numbers to be used, Ms. Deinhardt felt it was a common security practice. "I will not nullify the wishes of members who in good faith signed the petition because of this technical error," she said. Three sheets of signatures for Rail and Bus United were thrown out after the election committee discovered that the nominating petitioner who signed as the signature witness on the bottom of each page was no longer a member of Local 100. That cost Rail and Bus United 45 signatures. The slate also lost a petition that had no witness, costing it another 22 signatures. Legibility Questions On questions of legibility, Ms. Deinhardt said, she erred on the side of counting signatures rather than dismissing them. Many of the challenges to illegible names couldn't be resolved by tracing Social Security numbers or pass numbers; those remain pending, but the election committee was able to rule on enough of them to determine the ballot order for slates, which was its primary goal. Ms. Deinhardt noted that she was "concerned that a number of members who signed more than once for the same candidate or slate appear to have used a pass number for one signature and the last four digits of a SSN for the other." But the purpose of her report, she continued, was not to determine if there was fraudulent intent behind such signatures. Candidates could make arguments until Nov. 10 as to why a determination as to fraud should be made by her in these cases, she wrote. There were approximately 3,500 unique objections made between Rail and Bus United and One Union. A Fraction Upheld Of the 1,487 objections to One Union petitions filed by Rail and Bus United, Ms. Deinhardt upheld 137. Of the 2022 objections filed by One Union against its main challenger, Ms. Deinhardt upheld 110. There were 690 unresolved objections to One Union petitions and 925 unresolved objections to Rail and Bus United, almost all relating to legibility of name or identification. Ms. Deinhardt said most of them could probably be researched and clarified, but for the purposes of determining ballot placement it was unnecessary due to the large number of signatures Rail and Bus United lost on witness challenges. Both slates filed numerous objections to petitions being signed at the bottom by someone who did not actually witness the signatures on the sheet. The election rules state that "the member who obtains the signatures must completely sign the statement at the bottom of each petition, otherwise the petition will be invalid." The petitions also carry the same warning in boldface. Five Prime Targets Witness signature issues were raised about petitions signed and submitted by Philip Caruana and Maurice Jenkins from Stations, Jose Iglesias from the Track Division, and Harry Wills and Lisa Nixon from TA Surface. Mr. Caruana, of One Union, admitted that he didn't witness the signatures of members on two of the three petitions he submitted. The 42 signatures on them were withdrawn by the election committee. Mr. Caruana also withdrew his name as a One Union candidate for division vice chair of Station Cleaners and section recording secretary. Mr. Iglesias, from the One Union slate, admitted he did not witness the signatures of members on the five petitions he submitted. He said there were five petitions turned into the slate unsigned, and he put his name down as the witness. Those 80 signatures were discarded. One Union submitted similar protests about the signatures of Ms. Nixon, who is running as a Rail and Bus United candidate for TA Surface/Surface Operators executive board. Ms. Nixon filed seven petitions containing 281 signatures. This represented 20 percent of the total signatures for the TA Surface/Surface Operators department. Had a Stand-In Ms. Nixon contended that she spent nine days collecting signatures, including her two days off and after work. In addition to canvassing at her depot in East New York, she got signatures throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. Ms. Nixon told the election committee she had personally witnessed all of the signatures on her petitions except for one page that was given to her friend, Kevin Hopkins, to take to Jackie Gleason Depot. Ms. Nixon said she hadn't been able to get there herself. Mr. Hopkins collected signatures, and she signed the witness line. Upon inspection, Ms. Deinhardt concluded that many petitions bore the names of Jackie Gleason Depot workers, however, and two sheets corresponded to ones signed by individuals who said that Philip Alexander, not Ms. Nixon, collective their signatures for Rail and Bus United. Ms. Deinhardt said it was clear that at least two petitions weren't done by Ms. Nixon or Mr. Hopkins. She disqualified 110 of Ms. Nixon's signatures. The Energizer Petitioner Harry Wills, a vice presidential candidate for Rail and Bus United, filed 26 petitions containing 1,007 signatures from TA Surface/Surface Operators and six petitions containing 176 signatures from TA Surface/Surface Maintenance. His nomination sheets represented 71 and 46 percent of the total number of signatures for the two departments, respectively. Mr. Wills told the election committee he witnessed every signature on each petition he submitted. He said he gave up an extra shift to collect signatures in the morning from 4 to 8 a.m. He stated that he generally worked as a team with other Rail and Bus United supporters at rail yards and depots where he wasn't well known. Mr. Wills said he would stay in the crew room with petition sheets in front of him while his partner encouraged people to sign up. He said he never took his eyes off the signing sheets. During her investigation into how Mr. Wills was able to witness so many signatures in a comparatively short time, Ms. Deinhardt observed that he submitted a total of 32 petitions, which was 50 percent more than the person submitting the next-largest number of petitions (that was Richard Rivera, also of Rail and Bus United, who submitted 21). Following him came Maurice Jenkins, also of Rail and Bus United, with 18 petitions, and then all the rest of the petitioners from the remaining five slates, who averaged 16 petitions per person or less. Skepticism Justified "[Mr.] Wills apparently witnessed more than two-thirds of the total number of signatures from his division, [while] working full-time and taking only two days off," Ms. Deinhardt wrote. Her initial suspicions were corroborated by a number of witnesses, some produced by the One Union slate, as well as Mr. Wills, Ms. Nixon and other petitioners for Rail and Bus United. Ms. Deinhardt also called many of the petition signatories to ask them who witnessed their signatures. She discounted the claims from One Union witnesses that Mr. Will hadn't been at depots where he claimed to have witnessed signatures. He might easily have been on the premises and not been seen by them, she commented. But many other random calls produced witnesses who said other Rail and Bus United supporters - those listed as being Mr. Wills's partners in many cases - had collected their signatures. Comparatively few reported having their signatures witnessed directly by Mr. Wills. No Follow-Up Defense Rail and Bus United attorney Ivan Smith submitted several statements from transit workers that he said "were the first list of witnesses who can attest to the fact that Mr. Will's witnessed their signatures." No additional names have since been provided, Ms. Deinhardt noted. One statement said "We the under sign witness Harry Wills was present at the time the petition was signed by members of the Ulmer Park Maintenance facility." It has 26 signatures. The second read, "We the undersigned Bus Operators of Ulmer Park witnessed Division Chairman Harry Wills collect signatures for his petition to run for office." Ms. Deinhardt wrote that "given the wording of the statements, I do not find that either statement constitutes evidence that Wills in fact witnessed the signatures [as he claims]." Witnesses Misled? She continued: "When I called those [26 witnesses], of the seven I was able to reach, only one could accurately describe the substance of the statement. The others were under the impression that there had been some kind of problem with the nomination petition for Wills and so they needed to nominate him or the slate again." Others told her that Mr. Wills hadn't been present when they signed the original petitions, and others said that Shop Steward Lee Eikeseth called people into the union office and had them sign petitions when Mr. Wills was not present. Since Mr. Wills continued to insist he had personally witnessed every signature, Ms. Deinhardt said she "concluded that Mr. Wills has not been truthful in his statements to the election monitor." Discarding the petitions signed by Ms. Nixon and Mr. Wills would disqualify them as candidates for executive board members for TA, because they would no longer have enough to meet the minimum requirement. But Ms. Deinhardt said she was reluctant to disqualify candidates because it prevented members from voting for the candidate of their choice. She also noted that no protest or challenge was raised as to the validity of the signatures - only the witnessing process that was meant to prevent fraud. Allows Them to Run Since it appeared the 1,183 signatures were valid, Ms. Deinhardt said, she would let Ms. Nixon and Mr. Wills remain as candidates. But she discarded the signatures for the purpose of determining ballot placement. Other irregularities brought to her attention pertained to Mr. Jenkins's petitions. Mr. Jenkins, a candidate for Stations chair for Rail and Bus United, filed a large number of petitions. It was found that he engaged in similar team activity to Mr. Wills and could not have witnessed all the signatures he signed off on. A number of signatories on Mr. Jenkins's petitions who were randomly called denied seeing him when they signed the nomination sheets. Many said they had gotten them from other Rail and Bus United supporters. Six hundred and fifty three of Mr. Jenkins's signatures were ultimately tossed out by the election committee, but he had enough to remain eligible as a chair candidate.
"After making appropriate deductions for duplicate
signatures, improper attestation and sustained objections, [ ... ] Rail and Bus
United has 632 more signatures than One Union," Ms. Deinhardt wrote in
summation. "However, disregarding the 1,183 Wills signatures, the 110 Nixon
signatures and the 653 Jenkins signatures gives One Union more signatures, and
thereby the top position on the ballot." | |||||||||
)
)