Almost a month has passed since the polls closed on Election Day, but the fight is not over for a handful of unsuccessful candidates who sent letters on Monday blasting V.I. elections officials for the conduct of the 2012 election and demanding a recount or a new election. “These are just some of the problems, and nobody seems to want to step up to the plate to bring them forward, but I’m going to do it because I am a citizen of the Virgin Islands and a voter and a candidate, and I observed this first-hand,” said Lawrence Olive, a candidate for the 30th Legislature who was one of five candidates who filed complaints on Monday. “Now I know what we’re dealing with in the Elections System. Reform must come. Changes must be brought forward. If an investigation needs to take place, if people have to go to jail, then so be it. That is the only way we’re going to clean up the corruption.”
Olive, Senate At-large candidate Wilma Marsh-Monsanto and Delegate to Congress candidate Norma Pickard-Samuel filed nearly identical 18-page complaints on Monday with Joint Board of Elections Chairman Rupert Ross Jr., St. Thomas-St. John Board Chairwoman Alecia Wells and Elections Supervisor John Abramson Jr.
They claim that the territory’s election was tainted by “intentional and deliberate subversion by fraud, corruption and mistake” and “predicated on a foundation of negligence, abuse of position, and dereliction of duty laid stone-upon-stone by the election officials themselves.”
Full Article: Losing candidates send complaints blasting Elections System – News – Virgin Islands Daily News.