JONESBORO, Ga. — A Clayton County mayor held an emergency meeting Monday to address what she calls voter suppression in the upcoming November election. This comes after a 5-to-1 vote last week to host Jonesboro city and county elections in different polling locations.
What Jonesboro Mayor Donya Sartor thought would be a conversation among the city council turned out with the majority of council members no-showing and ended with lots of frustrated residents.
Not one, not two, but all five Jonesboro council members who voted to have separate city and county election sites in November didn't show up at the mayor's emergency town hall meeting.
Jonesboro resident Drew Andrews expressed his displeasure with the five council members skipping the meeting.
“I just think it’s simply ridiculous," Andrews said.
CASA in Action representative Michelle Sanchez spoke during public comment and said she's disappointed with all the empty chairs.
“If they really believed in their decision, they wouldn’t be scared and would have shown face today at this meeting," Sanchez said.
Last week, all five white council members voted to have a separate city election. The lone Black councilman, Alfred Dixon, voted against it and attended Monday's meeting.
“That’s disappointing," Sartor said. "I feel whenever we’re elected officials and there’s a call for us to listen to the constituents, then we have to make ourselves available.”
Sartor is Jonesboro's first Black mayor and believes multiple voting locations will cause confusion and voter suppression.
“It means they’ll have to go to two places if the county has an election, and then there’s also concerns about how much it will cost if the city will have to run it. It’s drastically cheaper for the county to run the election," Sartor said.
The cost for Clayton County to run a single election is $11,000, but taxpayers would have to shell out about $13,000 more for Jonesboro to run its own election.
“This is a predominantly Black community, many of which are living in poverty who do not have vehicles," Sanchez said. "It is an undue burden.”
“The data shows it disproportionately affects people of color," Andrews said. "This is a clear case of voter suppression, and whenever your voice has been suppressed, this is when we need to come together and get louder.”
The mayor plans to bring this issue up against at the next city council meeting in August.
11Alive reached out to all five council members who didn't attend Monday's emergency meeting. We heard back from one of them by our deadline. Councilman Ed Wise sent the following statement:
"I am out of town as I advised City Hall and Mayor Sartor on Friday when they first called for the “special called meeting” to be held tonight. There was much discussion with the Mayor and City Attorney before this meeting about the legalities of putting an item which had previously been voted down on the agenda for discussion. The other items I believed were to be placed on the August work session. In fact, the last correspondence received today around noon, was to cancel this meeting.
On the question as why I voted as I did, my vote as an elected councilman was to continue to have the City Handle the elections so as to not fall into a pattern of Outsourcing jobs that should be handled by our more than competent and qualified employees, in addition our City Clerk Melissa Brooks is a Certified Elections Superintendent, and assured us she could handle the Elections seamlessly. There was also given different financial figures as to the cost and services that would have been provided, and our first meeting with the County Elections Manager was the night of the Council Meeting. City residents had an opportunity to speak at our last Council meeting before our vote, and we had city residents speaking out against having the County handle the elections, and I believe one actual City resident in favor.
There has never been any issues or problems with the City handling elections until our last special election in March, when the City Mayor Donya Sartor, (who at the time was Councilwoman Sartor) was running for Mayor.
Once our New City Center was completed, our Former City Manager Ricky Clark (who resigned in April) and our Mayor Pro-Tem Tracey Messick were working with the County and State Elections to make the City Center a Precinct for all Elections, which would alleviate any concerns. To my knowledge our Current Mayor and Interim City Manager have not proceeded with any further action, however information is not always given to Council members on the day to day operations of the City."