A candidate who lost a recent Lynchburg City Council primary has dropped his lawsuit challenging the election results.
Peter Alexander had sued to have the results of the June 18 Republican primary in the city’s Ward IV declared invalid after Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi, the incumbent, won with 1,042 votes to Alexander’s 1,009.
Alexander argued that the results did not include 125 absentee ballots, and he raised concerns about a ballot drop box that contained seven votes that weren’t collected until more than two days after polls closed.
In a motion dated Friday and filed in Lynchburg Circuit Court on Monday, Alexander asked for his case to be dismissed, a request that a judge granted.
Alexander said that his legal challenge allowed him access to information he would not otherwise have had, including a review of election-related documents and a deposition of Lynchburg Registrar Daniel Pense.
“Based on such investigation, it has become apparent that all 125 absentee ballots at issue were, in fact, counted (with one possible exception), and that any such irregularities as may remain would not be sufficient to have a probable impact on the outcome of the Primary Election, given the 33-vote margin separating the two candidates,” Alexander said in the motion.
Reached by phone Monday, Alexander declined to comment but said he planned a press conference for Tuesday. His attorney, Bill Hurd, could not be reached for comment Monday.
In a statement Monday, Faraldi’s attorney, Zach Werrell, called Alexander’s lawsuit “a political hit job intended to waste my client’s money and time.”
“Within minutes of reading the complaint, it was obvious they were simply misinformed, confused themselves, or intentionally confusing the issue,” Werrell said. “The only reason public time and resources were wasted on this suit is because the cabal behind Mr. Alexander’s campaign simply could not or would not understand some rather basic data entries in the voter database.”
Alexander’s lawsuit, filed June 28, claimed that an electronic system used to track voter information was not updated to show that the 125 absentee ballots were counted.
On July 1, Pense and the city’s electoral board issued a statement saying that they were “confident that every lawful vote was counted” in the primary.
Neither Pense nor the board were named as defendants in the suit; state law framed Alexander’s election challenge as between him and Faraldi. Nonetheless, Pense retained Lynchburg attorney Philip Baker to represent him as the case proceeded.
On July 9, Lynchburg Electoral Board Chair David Levy told the city council that Alexander’s suit was based on an “erroneous and mistaken understanding” of how the electronic voter information system worked.
On July 22, Hurd told the three judges overseeing the case that Pense’s deposition revealed that the registrar’s office had used a hard-copy list, rather than the electronic system, to track the status of absentee ballots.
The case was scheduled for an Aug. 9 trial until Alexander requested the dismissal.
As Alexander’s legal challenge proceeded through the court system, it sparked another conflict when city council members Marty Misjuns and Jeff Helgeson alleged that City Attorney Matt Freedman intended to help defend Faraldi, which they said would be an improper use of public resources in a private lawsuit.
Helgeson and Misjuns supported Alexander in the primary, and Misjuns filed an affidavit that accompanied Alexander’s lawsuit.
Faraldi and Freedman have maintained that neither Freedman nor any public funds supported Faraldi’s legal representation.
On Monday, Faraldi asked his supporters on social media for donations to help his campaign recover “thousands of dollars in legal fees,” with the word “thousands” emphasized in all capital letters. Last month, Faraldi began selling T-shirts, hats, mugs and bumper stickers through an online store to “help our campaign cover legal costs”; each item reads, “Live. Laugh. Lawsuit.”
Faraldi said in his statement on Monday that his campaign now is focusing on the Nov. 5 general election. Four of Lynchburg’s seven city council seats will be up for grabs; in Ward IV, Faraldi will face Democrat April Watson.
“Being elected to serve as the Council Member for Lynchburg’s Fourth Ward has been the greatest honor of my life,” Faraldi said. “Being re-nominated to continue to serve in that role is the second greatest.”