House District 28 State Representative Dan Gasaway has filed another lawsuit in the ongoing battle over his legislative seat. The three-term incumbent filed the lawsuit late Wednesday in Banks County Superior Court. He’s asking the court to order a new election.
This is the second lawsuit Rep. Gasaway has filed in the past six months. He won an earlier court challenge after losing the GOP primary in May. Former Banks County School Superintendent Chris Erwin won that primary by 67 votes. Judge David Sweat ordered a redo after Gasaway and his attorneys proved in court that there were enough illegal votes cast in Habersham County to potentially change the outcome.
A Special Republican Primary was held on Dec. 4 and Gasaway lost by two votes.
Now, he’s hoping for a redo of the redo.
READ Erwin responds to latest lawsuit
More than the margin of victory
Gasaway’s latest lawsuit alleges the election boards in Habersham, Stephens, and Banks counties “wrongly accepted illegal votes, disenfranchised voters, and committed numerous irregularities in the Election.”
At least seventeen votes are in question.
“Because seventeen is more than the Election’s margin of victory of two,” the lawsuit states, “the Election’s result has been changed or placed in doubt.”
Gasaway and his team again relied on a sophisticated mapping system to plot out voters’ districts based on their residential addresses.
Among the voters in question are Banks County Sheriff Carlton Speed, his wife, and son. The lawsuit alleges all three voted illegally. Fox Five News reports Speed has property that lies in both Banks and Franklin counties. The problem, Gasaway says, is that their house is on the Franklin County side which puts them in House District 32.
Sheriff Speed told Fox Five the matter was settled in court several years ago. The station reports the matter was decided by a court clerk, not a judge.
The lawsuit points to ten other alleged voting irregularities in Banks and Stephens counties. And in Habersham, four votes are in question.
Gasaway’s attorneys claim one Habersham voter was assigned to the wrong district and another moved out of the district and was ineligible to vote. They also contend poll workers wrongfully turned away a voter after misidentifying his address. Another was turned away when poll workers told him he’d already voted. The man claims he did not. The poll worker then produced a signature on a sign-in sheet that was supposed to be the man’s signature. “It was not (his signature),” the lawsuit states.
