DATE: Thursday, July 24, 1997               TAG: 9707240353

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   68 lines

HIS ERRORS, NOT BIAS, DOOMED JUDGE'S RUN, ELECTIONS BOARD SAYS

Former judge Luther C. Edmonds' short, ill-fated run for the state House last month may have been even more disastrous than originally thought.

In court papers, the state Board of Elections says Edmonds committed a number of mistakes in his brief political career - including missing a filing deadline by 10 minutes and an appeal deadline by two days.

Edmonds, a former Norfolk Circuit Court judge who resigned last year while under investigation, tried to run against Del. William P. Robinson Jr. He filed candidate petitions on June 10, the deadline, only to see them invalidated three hours later. On June 13, Edmonds sued the elections board in Norfolk's federal court, saying it had violated his civil rights. He demanded reinstatement on the ballot and $1 million in damages.

Now the board has filed its reply. It says Edmonds was even more careless than originally credited.

The Norfolk elections board originally ruled Edmonds' candidate petitions invalid on the day he filed them. The board said Edmonds moved into Robinson's election district too late, and therefore was not registered to vote there when he circulated his own petitions. Those petitions must be witnessed by a registered voter in the district.

Now the state board says Edmonds made other serious mistakes:

Edmonds had too few valid signatures to be a candidate, even if all his petitions had been good.

Independent candidates for the House of Delegates need 125 signatures to be put on the ballot. Edmonds submitted 217. But the board says only 105 of those - less than half - were valid. The other signers were not registered to vote, or were registered in different districts, or could not be identified from their signatures.

Edmonds missed a deadline to file more signatures by 10 minutes.

After most of his petitions were ruled invalid June 10, Edmonds scrambled to gather more signatures in the hours before the elections office closed. The deadline was 7 p.m. Edmonds did not file his new signatures until 7:10.

Finally, Edmonds missed by two days the deadline to appeal the state board's ruling on his candidacy.

The board notified Edmonds by letter on July 2 that he was disqualified as a candidate. The board told Edmonds he could appeal by July 7. He did appeal, but too late.

Edmonds dated his appeal letter July 2 - the same day he was formally disqualified - but apparently did not mail it until July 8, when it was postmarked. That was one day after the appeal deadline. The appeal was received in Richmond the next day, July 9, two days late.

In court papers, the elections board says Edmonds was a victim of his own carelessness, not race discrimination or politics.

``The plaintiff's (Edmonds') problems occurred because he did not consult the registrar in advance for advice on preparing his petition, and he waited until the last minute to file his papers,'' the board says in its legal reply.

The board says it warned all candidates to file their petitions two weeks before the deadline, to allow time for review. Instead, Edmonds filed his papers the day they were due, five hours before deadline. When most of the petitions were ruled invalid, it was too late for Edmonds to correct them.

In a reply letter to the board, Edmonds accused local voter registrars of ``conveniently and illegally'' not trying hard enough to identify all signatures on his petitions.

He also argued that state law does not require that a petition circulator be registered in that district at the time he circulates a petition.

The election board has asked that Edmonds' lawsuit be dismissed. A hearing has not been set. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

The state Board of Elections says former judge Luther C. Edmonds'

own carelessness caused his disqualification.

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