V.I. Attorney General Vincent Frazer said Friday that he has set up a panel of his senior staff to look into a multitude of complaints residents have made to the V.I. Justice Department about the territory’s 2012 elections. “The complaints have been many,” he said. “We’ve gotten complaints about the conduct of the primary, about the certification of machines, about the use of ballots.” Those are just some of the complaints and allegations he is aware of, he said. “So we’ve established a panel of my senior staff to go in and investigate those things,” he said.
He created the panel – comprising five of his senior staff members – on Friday, he said. Frazer did not name the members of the panel.
The panel will look into written complaints residents have made to the Justice Department, as well as into problems with the election that have been reported in local media and discussed widely on radio talk shows, he said.
“They’ll be investigating any complaints of which we’re aware,” he said.
That will include an inquiry into public access issues at the St. Croix Elections System office on election night, when the office itself was barricaded off and the public was not allowed inside.
Inside is where the St. Croix Board of Elections was overseeing the counting of electronic votes. Elections officials have said that the reason for the barricades was that employees had received phone threats.
Television screens had been set up outside for the public, but they offered only a partial view of the vote-counting process and no sound.
The board is required by law to conduct its business in public, as it is subject to the mandates of the territory’s Open Public Meetings law.
A Daily News reporter who asked to view the vote-counting was allowed to do so for about 45 minutes, but was then ordered to leave.
Full Article: Attorney General orders probe of elections – News – Virgin Islands Daily News.