Wendover Mayor Ab Smith says his prospective successor acted improperly by spending time on Election Day near the voting booths, but Mayor-elect Brenda Morgan says she was merely conducting a straw poll of voters, not campaigning.
Wendover City Attorney Mark F. Bell is investigating allegations of irregularities in the Nov. 2 election contained in a letter from Smith dated Nov. 10 and sent to the Utah attorney general's office. In the letter, Smith said he had received a "considerable number of complaints from local voters" about the election at the Wendover fire station.Morgan, a city councilwoman whose term expires Dec. 31, received 72 votes in her bid for mayor, compared with 45 votes for Kent Peterson, a write-in candidate, and 34 votes for Councilman Frank Devine.
Smith wrote that local voters felt it "highly improper for Mrs. Brenda Morgan, the mayor-elect of Wendover, and Mr. George Gieber, city councilman, to have spent the better part of the day at our voting office."
Smith said he received reports that Morgan was trying to influence the voters in her favor. But Morgan said, "I absolutely did not campaign for votes for myself." She said she was there to conduct a straw poll to determine if Wendover citizens were interested in the city being annexed to Nevada.
She said she may have made a mistake in being there but did nothing to influence voting. She also said the mayor is trying to cause problems for her because she has disagreed with him on water and other issues and because she did not support the appointment of his son-in-law as chief of police.
"The mayor is holding these things against me. Only 11 people came to the voting booth while I was there," Morgan said. She also said Smith gave the city attorney "four names (those with complaints), two of whom weren't there while I was there."
She said she "never said one word at the voting booth about who to vote for. He's (Smith) saying that I intimidated them to vote for me, and that is not true." She did indicate that it was probably unwise for her to have been there, except to vote.
Smith told the Deseret News Saturday evening that he has nothing personal against Morgan but does feel "it is wrong for her to be there (at the voting place) all day long." He expressed similar feelings about Gieber.
Two of the three polling judges were contacted by the Deseret News and said they did not see or hear Morgan say or do anything that they consider illegal or unethical.
Bell said Saturday that he still needs to contact more people but he doesn't see anything yet that shows there was a violation of the law. But he said, "There may have been bad judgment."