The D.C. Board of Elections rejected a bid to recall a Southwest advisory neighborhood commissioner Tuesday — the same day she was being re-elected to her volunteer post.
Mary C. Williams, the same ANC commissioner who last year led a failed effort to recall Ward 6 D.C.Council Member Sharon Ambrose, defeated her election opponent by 10 votes to retain her seat. On that day, her three-month appeal of a recall effort was accepted by the election’s board.
“I was forced to campaign under this cloud,” Williams said in an e-mail. “What if I had lost because the prospect of my being recalled was an issue? Though I won my race, which goes to show that not everyone in my [single member district] bought into this political retribution bit, it would have helped to assure some uncertain people that a recall election was not an issue.”
The three-member board held that Sydney McMahan, the recall petitioner, failed to collect signatures on double-sided petition sheets as required by law, with one side displaying Williams’ written response to the recall bid. McMahan turned in 10 sheets, each consisting of two separate sheets stapled together.
“Accordingly, the Board rejects the ten petition sheets in question, with the result that McMahan’s petition to recall Williams has an insufficient number of signatures to qualify for the ballot,” the board wrote in its decision.
McMahan, a resident of single member district 6D-03 in the general area of the new baseball stadium, launched the recall bid in May, citing Williams’ alleged “frequent clashes with voters,” her “shameless” knack for self-promotion and her “disastrously unsuccessful smear campaign” of Ambrose.
He first turned in the petitions, which were initially accepted, in August. The board of elections conducted two hearings, one in September and another in early October, before ruling in Williams’ favor.
