The mayor of a small southwest Georgia city and two former election officials are now free on bond after being indicted on multiple counts of election interference and conspiring to shut down a special election in November. 

Camilla Mayor Kelvin Owens has been released on a bond of $6,000; City Clerk Cheryl Ford is free on a $10,000 bond; and former Election Superintendent Rhunette Williford posted a $7,000 bond, an official from the Mitchell County (Ga.) Sheriff’s Office told The Federalist Monday afternoon. The public officers face a combined 13 counts, including felony election interference charges, after being indicted by a Mitchell County grand jury last Wednesday. 

The scandal, stemming from the attempted cancelation of a special city council election in which Owens’ political ally was disqualified from running has stunned the community of 5,000 people, located about 60 miles north of Tallahassee. Only the special election, held on Election Day, was interrupted; the Nov. 5 general election, including the presidential election, went on unmolested. 

Owens, who is black, has blamed racial politics for the legal scuffles that led to the misconduct allegations. So have black community members and activists who see “systemic voter suppression” in the indictments. 

Owens did not return The Federalist’s request for comment. He was back at work on Monday, appearing at the regularly scheduled city council meeting. Council members approved a motion putting the city on the hook for the defendants’ legal bills. 

“The basis of it is that if you are a city official and if you’re operating within your job, your title, then there should be some degree of support,” the mayor told WALB. 

‘A Corrupt Government’

According to the indictment, the mayor, Ford, and Williford conspired to cancel the city municipal election. The mayor ultimately interfered by willfully attempting “to prevent a poll officer from holding an election,” asserts the indictment, obtained by The Federalist. Owens “did instruct the chief of police to post officers outside the polling places to prevent anyone, including poll officers and citizens desiring to vote, from entering into the polling place and casting votes, contrary to the laws of said state, the good order, peace and dignity thereof,” according to the charges.  

Owens was not pleased that the mayor’s political pals, Camilla City Council members Venterra Pollard and Corey Morgan, were disqualified to serve after investigations determined they did not reside within the city limits. Pollard and Morgan have described their political alliance as a “progressive majority that believes in equity, inclusion, and diversity both socially and economically.”

The council members ignored the judge’s ruling, continuing to “attend and vote at meetings,” according to the Albany Herald. 

While Pollard’s name remained on the ballot, a judge ordered a sign posted at Camilla City Hall declaring that his name had been removed from the list of qualified candidates and that “no votes cast for Venterra Pollard will be counted.” 

Owens pushed back. Days before the Nov. 5 election, the mayor told WALB that he voted for Pollard and expected his vote to be counted.

Chris Cohilas, who represented Pollard’s city council challengers, told the news outlet that through cooperation with the disqualified candidate’s political buddies, “they managed to try and get him ‘requalified’ to run for the very office that he had been removed from because the city controls the elections superintendent.”  

“And this is exactly what happens whenever you have corruption in government, is that the first thing you try, the first thing that a corrupt government will always try to manipulate is the election. And that’s what was happening here,” Cohilas told WALB on Oct. 30. “I’m not impressed with the mayor’s statements. What I am impressed with is what the judge says, because the mayor is very angry that the judge has ruled against the position that he’s been trying to support with the city of Camilla taxpayer dollars by leveraging the city attorney, he’s lost every single time.”

Cohilas could not be reached for comment on Monday. 

‘Almost the Election that Wasn’t’

Owens, Ford, who served as assistant election superintendent at the time, and Williford, the city’s election superintendent, instructed city employees the day before the special election to take down signs indicating where polling places were located, according to the indictment. On Election Day, they placed signs on the doors of polling places stating the election was canceled in a conspiracy “to prevent elections from occurring,” the charging document alleges.  

On election eve, Williford and Ford announced that they were resigning their positions. They claimed the “mental duress, stress, and coercion experienced by recent court decisions regarding our role in elections and the ultimate requirement to violate our oath of office as election officials is not something either of us are willing to participate in.”

The election officials had unsuccessfully appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, asking it to overturn the superior court judge’s ruling ordering that votes for Pollard not be counted. 

The indictment accuses Ford and Williford of conspiracy to commit fraud in their hasty resignations hours before the special election. They also face charges of failure to perform their public duties. Ford did not return The Federalist’s request for comment. Williford could not be reached for comment. 

A judge intervened and lifted Owens’ cancelation order, which he invoked under “emergency power” claims. But voting didn’t begin in the special city council election until just before 4 p.m. local time. Election Day went well into the early morning morning hours of Nov. 6, with the last votes counted some 12 hours later.

“It was almost the election that wasn’t,” the AP reported. 

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation investigated the case in Camilla.

South Georgia Circuit District Attorney Joseph K. Mulholland declined to comment while the case is pending. The defendants are expected to be arraigned in a month, with pretrial hearings likely occurring in August, according to law enforcement sources.

Now the indictments, like the disqualifications of the black council members, are being painted as racist. One leftist publication called the charges against the three black public officials “the latest chapter in southwest Georgia’s 157-year struggle against systemic voter suppression and judicial complicity.” 

But you can’t cancel elections — and you certainly can’t do so because you don’t like a judge’s verdict against your preferred candidate. That’s what Camilla’s mayor and his two alleged co-conspirators are accused of doing. And if they are found guilty, the defendants could face many years in prison and some very hefty fines.