Court invalidates petitions for Greenburgh primary

Torrent found that Areces and Preston had "engaged in fraud in obtaining signatures" and found Beville "indictable for knowledge of fraud in obtaining signatures."

Beville, Areces and Preston had submitted a petition with 2,185 signatures to the Westchester County Board of Elections. A minimum of 1,000 signatures is required to appear on the ballot.

In response, 1,167 of those signatures were challenged in a lawsuit filed by city clerk candidate Lisa Maria Nero and city board candidates Gina Jackson (incumbent) and Beatrice Joy Haber, who were endorsed by the Greenburgh Democratic Caucus in February. .

Nero, Jackson and Haber requested a line-by-line review of the signatures. Due to time constraints, the court completed a partial review that upheld objections to 238 of the 333 signatures.

“Furthermore, given the number of objections to the remaining signatures and the high rate at which objections have been sustained that have been reviewed, the inevitable result of completing the line-by-line review, which cannot be done at this time, would be the invalidation of a number of signatures so large as to bring the total number of valid signatures below the required threshold," the ruling states.

The hearing on the petition took place on April 26 and 27, during which Preston testified that he had signed witness statements for signatures he had not witnessed, specifically signatures on a sheet left at Valuable Drugs on Tarrytown Road.

"Although his action was contrary to the law and unwise, the Court considers that he did not act for any nefarious reason," the ruling states.

With respect to Areces, the court discredited his testimony about witnessing signatures on a specific sheet due, in part, to the testimony of a man who claimed that he did not sign that sheet even though his name appeared on it. The sheet also deviated from Areces' practice of filling out a sheet before starting a new sheet, according to the ruling.

Regarding Beville, the sentence indicates that he gave a testimonial statement dated March 12 for a sheet with signatures dated between March 18 and 27.

Further, the ruling states that, “Even if the entire Petition for Appointment was not tainted with fraud, the many irregularities revealed in the limited line-by-line review along with the testimony of Ms. Beville that she has been City Clerk for 14 years , that she is familiar with the rules for the collection of signatures and that she is the person to whom the complete sheets were delivered justifies that she be charged with knowledge of fraud in the collection of signatures. This is especially so in light of her testimony that she was not provided with incomplete witness statement sheets, which tends to establish that she conducted some review of the sheets before the BOE Application for Designation was filed. . [board of elections]. Any such review would have revealed the obvious irregularities in many of the sheets."

The ruling also points to irregularities such as a witness signature that is not similar to a signature on file with the Westchester County Board of Elections; a signature other than the printed name of a witness; names printed with similar handwriting; and two signatures in similar handwriting that do not resemble the signatures on file with the board of elections.

On April 28, the Greenburgh Democratic Caucus released a statement from Nero, Jackson, and Haber.

“We thank the Greenburgh Democratic City Committee for their diligence in bringing fairness and transparency to government,” the statement read. “It is important to hold our elected officials and candidates to the highest standards in order to provide the people of Greenburgh with high-quality, transparent and responsive government.”

In a statement shared with the Inquirer, Beville disagreed with the ruling. For example, he referred to names declared invalid because they were printed but not signed, and others of voters whose addresses had changed since they registered with the electoral board.

“None of this constitutes 'fraud,'” he wrote.

Regarding the ruling that she was charged with knowledge of fraud, Beville wrote: “To hold myself 'accusable', to say that I must have known about the 'pharmacy request' was tantamount to charging me with a crime I did not commit. I felt like one of the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who, throughout history, have been falsely accused and continue to be accused and severely sentenced for a crime they did not commit."

Beville also noted that 1,018 signatures were not contested, which would have been enough to secure a spot on the ballot for her and her running mates.

“Defiance of our petition of 2,167 signatures from the residents of this city denies the opportunity for honest competition and choice of the voters in the upcoming primaries,” Beville wrote.

Beville and Areces do not plan to appeal the court's decision. Instead, they are collecting signatures to run as independents. Preston decided not to run as an independent. The deadline to file those petitions is May 30. According to Areces, he and Beville need 1,500 signatures to appear on the ballot as independents.

When asked about the status of his effort to collect those signatures, Areces said: “We're on a roll here. We are on a roll. The community loves us, and every time they see me or Judith they stop and sign.”