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Accusing incumbent of voter intimidation, Springfield City Council candidate plans to contest election results

Jynai McDonald outside the Rebecca Johnson School on Election Day, Nov. 2, 2021
Paul Tuthill
/
WAMC
Jynai McDonald outside the Rebecca Johnson School on Election Day, Nov. 2, 2021

Pattern of unethical, illegal behavior is alleged

A losing candidate is contesting the results of a City Council election in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Jynai McDonald, who lost the election for the Ward 4 City Council seat to incumbent Malo Brown by 101 votes, said she’ll petition for a hand recount of all 1,193 ballots that were cast in the race.

“Once we have that recount we will be able to examine some of the absentee ballots, some of the spoiled ballots, some of the ballots that could have been mismarked,” said McDonald in an interview.

If the recount does not flip the outcome, McDonald said she is preparing to contest the election in court.

“I will be asking (the court) to take into account all of the other unethical and unlawful things that took place throughout the election,” McDonald said.

In letters sent this week to the office of the state Attorney General and the election division of the Secretary of State, McDonald alleges Brown broke numerous campaign finance and election laws and accuses him of voter intimidation.

She claims Brown, who is Chief of Staff to State Rep. Bud Williams of Springfield, has used public resources to raise campaign funds, posted campaign signs on public property, and on Election Day violated the rule prohibiting electioneering within 150 feet of a polling entrance. Her letters allege that Brown “physically approached voters in their vehicles, followed them within close range into polling locations … harassed voters and challenged their choice when they expressed their intentions to vote for particular candidates.”

Brown denied the allegations.

“It’s been a slanderous attack,” Brown said. “I’m not into slandering attack. I’m really looking to help build the community.”

McDonald said she is making a public records request for body camera footage from police officers stationed at the polling locations where she alleges Brown intimidated voters. It is not known if any footage exists. Springfield Police Department spokesman Ryan Walsh said there were no police reports filed about any polling place incidents.

Brown said the voters of Ward 4 have spoken and he called on McDonald to abide by the outcome.

“I ran a positive campaign, me and my team. It’s been clean,” Brown said.

The Ward 4 election was a rematch from 2019 when Brown was first elected by a margin of 131 votes over McDonald. She voiced similar complaints about Brown then.

“So this is really me being the kid in the playground that stands up to the bully,” McDonald said. “He’s been doing this for two elections in a row.”

In her letter to state officials, McDonald also questioned how the election was run by the city. She claimed there were problems with the new voting equipment that was used for the first time in this election and with the vote-by-mail program.

Others have also voiced concerns about reported delays by the election office in sending mail-in, or absentee ballots to voters who requested them.

Zaida Govan, the City Councilor-elect from Ward 8, said she heard from several people who complained their ballot arrived so late they did not have enough time to mark it and return it to City Hall by the 8 p.m. Election Day deadline.

“And it was very disheartening to me,” Govan said.

City Councilor Justin Hurst, who was the top vote-getter in the at-large council election, has called for a City Council committee hearing into the reported problems with this year’s mail-in voting.

City Clerk Gladys Oyolo-Lopez, who oversees the Election Office, did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

She told the Springfield Republican newspaper that mail-in voting was a “success’ with more than 2,000 ballots cast by mail.

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.