Clerk court candidates declared eligible to run

Two candidates for clerk of Cobb County Superior Court will stay on the July ballot despite challenges to their qualifications for the seat.

The county’s Board of Elections voted 4-0 Monday to deny a challenge against Joan P. Davis that charged she should be disqualified from the race for misleading voters by listing her occupation as a lawyer even though she was disbarred by the state Supreme Court this year.

Reading from a list of qualifications for the office, there is no qualification for a clerk candidate to hold a specific occupation, said the board’s attorney, Gregg Litchfield, in his opinion before the vote. The board did vote to refer to the district attorney for a possible false statement investigation of Davis’ filing forms.

Alan C. Manheim, an attorney for an east Cobb resident who filed the challenge, dropped the second portion of the challenge that initially charged Davis with misleading voters because her filing forms listed the same person as her potential chief deputy clerk as another candidate running against her.

The chief deputy clerk is not an elected position, but local election rules require clerk candidates to disclose their selection for the job before the election. Davis listed current deputy Elva Dornbusch as her selection, but Dornbusch never agreed to serve under Davis.

The board also threw out a second challenge against candidate Rebecca Keaton that charged she should be disqualified for filing qualifying papers on a different day than when she filed an affidavit listing herself as a possible chief deputy clerk appointee. The board’s 40 vote followed Litchfield’s opinion that the requirement for the chief deputy designation is a local one and not part of state qualifications for the seat, and cannot be used to disqualify a candidate.

Keaton

Davis