The V.I. Joint Board of Elections Personnel Committee plans to start interviewing the qualified applicants for V.I. elections supervisor and both deputy supervisors next Wednesday and to make final recommendations soon after, committee chairman Raymond Williams told the St. Croix Board of Elections on Wednesday.
V.I. Elections Supervisor John Abramson, who has been out on medical leave, sent the Joint Board of Elections a letter on Jan. 31 announcing he was resigning the position with an effective date of May 31, 2013. He recently notified the Joint Board he would be unavailable until after that date.
Deputy Supervisor of Elections for St. Thomas Mabel Maduro resigned March 14 and Deputy Supervisor of Elections for St. Croix James Weber III resigned abruptly March 18, leaving the system without day-to-day top management.
Before announcing his own departure, Abramson pushed to have both Maduro and Weber removed from their positions. Maduro was suspended at Abramson’s request in September 2012, and then reinstated with back-pay in December. St. Croix Board of Elections Chairman Adelbert Bryan has expressed antipathy toward and distrust of Abramson and tried, without success, to have the Joint Board remove Abramson prior to Abramson’s retirement. (See related links below)
Abramson authorized payroll, bill payments and other activities necessary for operating the election system during this interval and has pre-approved payroll, rent and bill payment through the end of June, St. Croix elections office staff member Tricia Johnson reported to the board during its regular meeting Wednesday. After the end of the month, the lack of a person with the legal authority of the supervisor of elections will become problematic for day to day operations, she said.
Williams said he would call and arrange interviews for the supervisor position on June 12. St. Croix Board Member Roland Moolenaar said interviews for the deputy supervisor positions would take place immediately afterwards, on June 13 and 14, "if that is doable for everyone.”
"My goal is to complete the process and report back to the chair no later than June 19 and schedule a special (Joint Board) meeting soon after that," Moolenaar said.
Meanwhile new voting machines long sought by Bryan have arrived in the territory and the St. Croix Elections Office needs to find a place to store the old machines before it can go pick them up, Bryan told the board.
Bryan said he had been having some difficulty setting up a time and place for training the board with the new equipment manufacturer. In the meantime, the board approved a motion from member Liliana Belardo de O’Neal to arrange a formal session with board members and elections staff to sit and view a manufacturer’s DVD about the new machines. The motion was approved unanimously.
Present at Wednesday’s meeting were Bryan, Moolenaar, Williams, O’Neal, Lisa Harris-Moorhead, Rupert Ross and Glenn Webster.
