A Roanoke County School Board member may have a misdemeanor charge for election fraud dismissed if he completes 100 hours of community service within six months.
Roanoke County General District Judge Jaqueline Talevi signed off on the plan Thursday morning after Tim Greenway, who represents the Vinton District of the school board, entered a plea of not guilty.
Greenway was charged on Oct. 1 with a class 1 misdemeanor regarding his paperwork to get on the ballot for the school board election this fall.
Some petition pages contained voter signatures with dates that didn’t track with the dates the pages had been notarized, said special prosecutor Eric Branscom, the commonwealth’s attorney for Floyd County.
Branscom said there was sufficient evidence for an election fraud charge, but considered Greenway’s repeated claims that the problem pages were a mistake. Branscom said the validity of the petition signatures was never in question, and that the only issue was with the notarization of the pages.
Greenway collected new signatures and resubmitted his candidate paperwork. He qualified to be on the ballot on June 13, according to email exchanges between Greenway and county registrar Anna Cloeter obtained by Cardinal News.
Branscom affirmed Thursday that Greenway is legally on the ballot, and that the signatures are valid.
“The guy never stops,” said Greenway’s attorney, John Lichtenstein, after the hearing, describing Greenway’s career in real estate, his service on the school board and his community involvement. He was simply “moving too fast” when collecting signatures to get on the ballot, Liechtenstein said.
“There was no question regarding the accuracy of those who then and now supported Tim in this race, as reflected on the forms,” Lichtenstein added in a statement.
In a statement of his own, Greenway said that he was “very pleased to have come together to resolve this matter,” and that he was looking forward to the election “and getting back to work for the children, teachers and schools of the Vinton District!”
Greenway is running for reelection after nearly 10 years on the board; he was first elected in 2015 and reelected in 2017 and 2021.
A misdemeanor conviction for an election-related issue would not bar Greenway from serving on the school board.
Greenway’s original election paperwork submitted in May contained petition pages with the 125 signatures required to get on the ballot.
Cloeter reviewed the forms and asked Greenway to resubmit his paperwork because of date inconsistencies for the affidavits and notarizations on some of the pages, according to a letter she wrote to Greenway that was obtained by Cardinal News.
When he resubmitted his paperwork a few days later, Greenway told Cloeter he hadn’t made the person who circulated the petition appear before a notary to re-sign the affidavits, Cloeter wrote in the letter, dated May 30.
Cloeter said in the letter that problems with Greenway’s forms remained. Among the issues she listed were three instances in which a voter appeared to sign a petition for their spouse as well as for their own petition entry.
The school board has not had a monthly meeting with public comment since Greenway was charged.
