Spruill remains mayor after judge rules on election contest

Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill will retain the city’s highest office after a judge affirmed the results of the 2017 Democratic Primary for mayor on Friday. 

While a final tally for the election results was not given, Spruill’s legal counsel, attorney Jim Mozingo, explained that Judge Ford did subtract one vote from the tally, bringing Spruill’s lead to five votes instead of six over challenger Johnny Moore. 

“It was a five-vote lead, but no matter how the rest of the ballots that (Ford) would open or check would come out, it wouldn’t matter, so we aren’t going to go through bothering opening those because it’s a zero-sum game,” Mozingo said. 

Spruill was originally certified as the winner by a seven-vote margin of victory, which Moore immediately challenged. 

The Starkville Daily News previously reported a total of eight affidavit ballots were in question, along with one absentee ballot challenged by Moore’s team and another absentee ballot challenged by Spruill’s team.

Ford then said there was no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing that occurred during the election by the election commissioners or anyone else involved in the process. 

After reviewing case law, he then ruled that the eight affidavit ballots would be rejected, instead of being counted by the election commissioners as Moore's team requested. Additionally, 51 of the 52 absentee ballots in question by Moore's team were accepted. 

Moore’s legal counsel, attorney William Starks, said they were disappointed with the outcome and were still left with questions after Judge Ford made his final ruling Friday morning. 

“We put on a case where there were at least 10 ballots that were validly cast in our opinion that should have been counted,” he said. “We had election commissioners testify at trial that they should have been and they made mistakes on them. Then the judge says they didn’t do anything wrong.” 

Starks then said Judge Ford made the comment that he would count one of the ballots in question by Moore’s team, but reversed course without explaining the rationale behind not accepting the ballots. 

“So the lack of explanation on each ballot and why it should not have counted was disappointing and I thought the judge should have gone through each of those and explained why it was not a valid ballot,” Starks said. “It was basically ‘the election commissioners did their job’ and they admitted on the stand they didn’t, we disagree with that.” 

Starks then said Moore will consider the possibility of an appeal to the state Supreme Court following the decision. He will have 30 days to file an appeal. 

Johnny Moore did not make himself available for comment immediately following the ruling. 

Spruill said she was relieved following the ruling and is ready to hopefully get back to the city's business without any further distractions. 

"(The support has) been enormous and I have been incredibly honored by that, because I had no expectation," Spruill said. "I have had a whole lot of people who have been incredibly supportive and it’s been very gratifying."

This is a developing story. For more on Friday’s election contest, read Saturday’s Starkville Daily News.