It took members of the Richmond County Board of Elections just ten minutes to rule an application to recall Augusta Commission District 3 Commissioner Catherine McKnight lacked “legal sufficiency.”
The board met in a special called meeting to review the application filed on Monday, Feb. 28 by District 3 resident Monique Braswell.
Under Georgia law, each person, also called a sponsor, who signs the application must be registered to vote and eligible to vote in the recall election and live in the district of the elected official being recalled. The application requires the signatures of at least 100 of the active, registered voters from the official’s last election.
“When we verified the signatures of the sponsors, only 92 met the threshold of being registered and eligible to vote for District 3,” said Elections Director Travis Doss. “And so that is below the threshold of 100 sponsors, since only 92 are actually valid signatures are valid sponsors.”
Braswell announced her intention to request McKnight be recalled during a heated Feb. 23 news conference called to condemn the redistricting map drawn up by state Senators Max Burns (R-District 23) and Lee Anderson (R-District 24).
The Burns-Anderson map, signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp, removes precinct 309 from District 3 and moves it into District 5, currently represented by Commission Pres. Pro Tem Bobby Williams.
At the time, Braswell blamed McKnight for not fighting to keep the precinct in her district.
Braswell, who attended the meeting, had attempted to withdraw the application, but the law does not allow an application to be withdrawn once it has been submitted to the elections office.
“My reasoning for withdrawing at all had to do with, I feel like until they out the people really, really responsible for this, I’m not going to help make her a scapegoat,” Braswell said. “While I feel like her hand may have touched in the surface, I don’t feel like she deserved to be in the position that she’s in alone.
McKnight did not attend the meeting.
“I’m confident it will all come out okay,” she said.
The heart of the issue is the results of the 2020 census. It shows Richmond County population grew by 3% to 206,607 residents. That means the ideal, balanced district size is 25,825. However, District 3 grew by more than 21%. It had 31,316 residents, forcing officials to redraw the districts to move residents.
Dana Lynn McIntyre is a general assignment reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach her at dana@theaugustapress.com
