By Donna Hales
The winner of the Taft town clerk’s position was related to two of the three precinct officials conducting the election, said the former clerk.
“A precinct official may not be related to a candidate within the third degree,” Muskogee County Assistant Election Board Secretary Ellen Thames said Friday.
Elsie Ceasar failed by 10 votes to keep her job. Friday, she inquired about filing an electronic protest. She later opted not to, election officials said.
Ceasar’s challenger and winner of the election, Alisha Craig Sourie, was related to two of the three precinct officials.
Thames said if she had been alerted, even on election day, she would have sent a new team to take over the Taft election.
“Two years ago we pulled a team in from Muskogee to offset problems like this,” Thames said.
Jaronda Craig, the clerk who handed out ballots at the election, is Sourie’s daughter, Thames said she learned after the election.
The precinct inspector, Cassandra Smith, is a cousin, but a distant cousin to Sourie, Thames said.
“In training, workers are told all the criteria,” Thames said. “They failed to mention to me they were kin to anybody over there.”
The last time Craig went through the training was on Jan. 16, 2008, so she should have known if she was related to a candidate she could not act as election clerk, Thames said.
The third precinct worker in Tuesday’s election, Jacqueline Brewer, was not related to Sourie. None of the three precinct workers could be reached for comment Friday.
“I don’t like confusion,” Ceasar said Friday. “I’m just going to let it go. If that’s what the people want, let them have who they elected.”
Thames said she told Ceasar she had a right to file a complaint alleging an irregularity, but would have to state specifically how the relatives of Sourie working the election would have made the outcome different.
