Norwalk District B Democrats declare their election invalid

NORWALK, Conn. – A “bit of a debacle” has delayed the naming of South Norwalk Democratic leadership.

District B Democrats will vote next month to select officers as an election held last Friday was declared invalid, sources said.

“It doesn’t doesn’t affect the town committee at all,” said David Westmoreland, who served as monitor for the election at the District B meeting. “It really was a bit of a debacle but it will be fixed at the next meeting in April.”

State Rep. Bruce Morris (D-140) and Ernie Dumas of A Better South Norwalk competed to be chairman, sources said. Morris won, but, again, it was declared invalid.

The problem, according to Westmoreland, is that District B has had three corresponding secretaries over the past year. Record keeping became spotty, he said. The list “was not accurate in terms of who was eligible to vote,” Westmoreland said. “It was not obvious until we started voting.”

“We had members that were put forward to vote that really weren’t members of the district,” Councilman Travis Simms (D-District B) said. “Then we had members of the district that wasn’t put on the ballot to vote. We had some questions about that and we are in the midst of figuring all of that stuff out.”

Simms called it “a matter that’s taken care of itself.”

“I can’t say whether it was deliberate or not. That remains to be seen. Right now I don’t want to speculate. But I just think that we’re trying to work this thing out and get some help from state central, figure this thing out and come to the right conclusion on this,” he said.

District B members have to have attended at least three meetings in 2013 or have attended the January, February and March meetings, plus the special election meeting, to be able to vote for officers, Westmoreland said.

“We had a committee put together that next week will go through all the meeting minutes and sign-up sheets and see who is eligible to vote. We’ll put it out so people have time to dispute it,” Westmoreland said.

Bobby Burgess and Olivia Dardy are competing to be vice chairman, he said. Burgess won the disallowed election.

Mary Geake and Councilwoman Phaedrel “Faye” Bowman (D-District B) are competing to be treasurer. Geake won the disallowed election.

Darlene Young is running for secretary in an uncontested race.

“It really was not well thought out but there wasn’t a conspiracy or anything,” Westmoreland said.

District officers are not responsible to the town committee, he said. “At the end of the day it’s didn’t have any effect,” he said.

Dumas said he felt that everything was on the up and up. He declined further comment.