DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) – Lawyers for current Macon County Sheriff Tony “Chubby” Brown have filed two motions and a prehearing summary Thursday in regards to the 2018 Macon County Sheriff’s race recount ballots. This comes the day before both Brown and Lt. Jim Root are expected back in court for a judge to go through contested ballots.
The race between Democrat Tony Brown and Republican Jim Root, which initially came down to one vote, led to a trial involving 1,337 contested ballots.
On November 20th, 2019 the Macon County Clerk named Tony “Chubby” Brown as Sheriff with 19,655 votes. Brown won by one vote over Root. A full recount was done and reveled on July 24th, 2020 which showed Brown ahead by 18 votes with 1,394 remaining ballots contested and uncounted ballots.
In one motion filed Thursday, the lawyers representing Sheriff Tony “Chubby” Brown requests that the court stop the lawyers for Lt. Jim Root from presenting any evidence or argument regarding fraud, ballots cast exceeding ballot applications, and “stuffing” the ballot box. The motion filed Thursday cites that the lawyers for Root had previously alleged In the court documents that “mistakes and fraud have been committed in the casting and counting of ballots for the office of Sheriff of Macon County.” However, a court previously ruled that the allegations of electoral fraud were unsupported.
In a second motion filed, lawyers for Brown ask the court to not include the two remaining ballots that were allegedly found after the election and hand recount. On December 19th, 2018 the lawyers for Root said that two ballots found were not counted or included in the vote totals reported by the election judges and the County Clerk. Former County Clerk Stephen Bean has testified saying that sometime after the election he found two ballots on his desk with a note on them saying they had not been counted. Bean said the ballots were not handled in the manner established by his office. According to Bean, all voted ballots are placed in a secure bag that if opened or tampered with it would be known. Bean stated he does not know where the ballots on his desk came from but placed him in a safe. Bean said he had forgot about the ballots and remembered them after Brown won by one vote. Bean then called Jerrold Stocks, who was at the time the lawyer for Root, and told him about the two ballots and invited Stocks into the closed County Clerk’s office on a Sunday to discuss. According to the court documents, Bean did not contact the lawyers for Brown. A second person previously testified in court in regards to the two found ballots stating they may have come from the overflow bins at Hickory Point 1. The election worker stated that the two ballots were placed in envelopes and he did not know where they went after the they closed down the precinct.
The second motion cites the two ballots should not be counted because against law they were exposed to unauthorized people and no proper “chain of custody” was established when collecting the votes.
In the respondent's prehearing summary , the lawyers representing Brown ask the judge to deny the Petitioner’s Verified Election Contest Petition and enter judgement in favor of Tony “Chubby” Brown as Sheriff of Macon County. In that 19 page document, seen here, the lawyer cites several concerns over the petitioned ballots including concern over the copies of the ballots saying some copies are incomplete, cut off, and some having “extraneous” writings from unknown authors.
Both candidates and their lawyers are expected in court on Friday. After previously being delayed twice, the trial had dates set for Dec. 10 and Dec. 18. However, because of the length of time to go through ballots tentative dates of Dec. 29 and Jan. 20 were added. In the first part of the trial, officials spent the afternoon entering each contested ballot into evidence so they can be referenced in case there is an appeal of the final result. In court on December 10th, the lawyers for Root said their findings from the full recount had Root with 19,571 votes and Brown with 19,554 votes.
