SUFFOLK, Va. - Nearly 80 people have now come forward to the voter registrar to say their signatures were forged by the campaign for a city council candidate, the registrar said Tuesday morning.
The Electoral Board met Tuesday to discuss whether Art Bredemeyer should be disqualified from running in the Suffolk Borough District against John Rector.
As News 3 first reported last month, some voters say they never signed forms to qualify Bredemeyer as a candidate.
The three-member Electoral Board voted to seek legal advice from an attorney before moving forward. They said they could later take action themselves to remove Bredemeyer from the ballot or ask a judge to take up the issue.
They will have to move quickly. The latest deadline for the printer of the ballots for Election Day is Sept. 1, the registrar said.
Bredemeyer's campaign needed to submit the signatures of 125 voters in order to qualify him to be on the ballot by June 21. The registrar says the campaign submitted 225 with 201 submitted by a campaign consultant.
The signatures in question were all collected by the same consultant, whom News 3 is not currently identifying because she is not currently charged with anything. State Police are investigating and an investigator attended Tuesday's meeting. He declined to say whether he had interviewed the consultant.
Bredemeyer attended Tuesday's hearing with his wife, who spoke up in his defense.
"I've been kind of disappointed about some of the disparaging remarks about a man who is completely honorable," Beverly Bredemeyer told those in attendance.
Art Bredemeyer said he wanted to see how many signatures the registrar determines to be fake.
"We'll have to look at the registrar's numbers and make a determination about what we do because I don't want to be on the ballot illegitimately," he said to reporters when leaving the meeting.
Bredemeyer said he did not know the consultant and his campaign hired her because he ran out of time to collect the signatures before the deadline.
"I'm embarrassed for myself and these people because we've been taken advantage of apparently by this person," he said.
He said when reviewing the petition he noticed the signature of someone he knew and called him to thank him for signing the form. He says that person went to the registrar to say his signature was forged, which began all of the questions about the forms.
"I'm glad I made that call because I'm not that kind of person. I'm a man of integrity," he said.
Dozens of voters also attended Tuesday's meeting.
"My name is on the petition and I did not sign it. We actually believe we were out of town the day it got signed - June 18," said Brenda Galen, a voter.
As for the race, if Bredemeyer is disqualified, John Rector would be running unopposed.
Rector didn't deny that would put him in a politically advantageous spot, but added, "I also don't think if a candidate is on the ballot fraudulently then people should not necessarily have the right to vote for that person because they did not properly get themselves on the ballot."
News 3 attempted to track down the campaign consultant on Tuesday. On the forms, she said she lived at a home in Newport News, but a woman at the home said the consultant did not live there and said she did not know why the consultant would say she did. No one answered at another possible address for the consultant in Hampton.
