Special election in the town of Fort Deposit set for January 13th

From the West Alabama Newsroom–

The town of Fort Deposit finds itself in uncharted territory — after a judge throws out the results of the municipal election — and orders a new election.

People in Fort Deposit will head to the polls after the holiday season — to chose a mayor and the remainder of the town council.

This comes after Lowndes County Circuit Judge Cleveland Poole found that hundreds of illegal absentee votes had been cast in the municipal election back in August.

Poole then threw out the illegal votes and the election results — and ordered a new election.

Since the election was thrown out — the only officials sworn into office on November 3rd — were the two town councilmen who ran unopposed in the election.

The two are now running the town for the time being.

Darrell Heartsill is the acting Mayor Pro Tem.

“January 13th is the special election date. We were going to have it earlier but we got, had the holidays coming up,” he said.

“The Secretary of State said they never had anything like this happen before. And the League of Municipalities never had it happen before. So, a lot of this is gray area, is what they told us.”

Heartsill says the town is training new poll workers in preparation for the special election.

He says there will also be election monitors on hand — to try and ensure that the election process is clean and fair.

“Everyone that we talked to that’s what they want is a fair election,” said Heartsill.

“And I think that that’s what they’re going to get this time.”

More than half of the votes cast in the Fort Deposit municipal election were by absentee ballot.