Iberville group to push for recall

• By KORAN ADDO
• Advocate Westside bureau
• Published: Jul 10, 2009 - Page: 5B

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PLAQUEMINE — Leaders of a citizens group working to oust an Iberville Parish School Board member over a controversial school closure vote said Thursday they plan to push forward despite “good ol’ boy network” efforts to stop them.

Rev. Reginald Pitcher, president of North Iberville Concerned Citizens, held a news conference outside of Registrar of Voters Melissa Bourgoyne’s office Thursday to accuse her of improperly disqualifying signatures on a recall petition aimed at removing Iberville Parish School Board member David “Worm” Daigle from office.

Concerned Citizens was allowed 180 days, until Oct. 4, to collect 518 valid signatures, or one-third of the 1,556 registered voters in Daigle’s District B to force a recall election.

The group submitted 747 signatures by July 1 to the parish Registrar’s Office, which then proceeded to check them against signatures of registered voters on file in the office.

Bourgoyne said Wednesday her office validated 552 of the 747 signatures on the recall petition.
The registrar also validated 92 of 98 signatures of people who signed forms circulated by Daigle requesting their names be stricken from the Concerned Citizens’ petition.

The validation process ultimately reduced the number of signatures on the recall petition to 460 names, or 58 short of the 518 valid signatures needed to force the recall election, according to a tally issued by the Registrar’s Office Thursday.

“Contrary to what the media has reported, we did not lose the battle to unseat David Daigle,” Pitcher said. “We were robbed and we were cheated. Undoubtedly, the good ol’ boy network is in operation because Bourgoyne has either refused or is unwilling to do her job.”

At the center of the dispute is Daigle’s decision to side with the majority in voting 8-7 on April 21 to close the high school portion of the academically troubled North Iberville High School and transfer its students to the larger but also academically distressed Plaquemine High School in the fall.

Daigle has said the transfer would result in North Iberville High students gaining more educational resources and greater opportunities to succeed at Plaquemine High.

Bourgoyne maintained that her office meticulously checked all of the signatures on the petition, disqualifying the names of people who don’t live in District B, or who signed the petition twice or whose signatures didn’t match their signatures on voter registration cards.

Bourgoyne, who was not in her office during Thursday’s news conference because of a prior work commitment, said earlier Thursday that she met with Pitcher on Wednesday and explained to him why names were disqualified from the recall petition.

Bourgoyne also has stated that since June 24, when the first batch of recall petitions was turned in, her staff set aside routine office business and worked nonstop to validate signatures on the recall petition.

Bourgoyne said she and her staff remained impartial during the entire petition process.
But her explanations didn’t satisfy Pitcher on Thursday afternoon, when he said that Bourgoyne took the 92 validated signatures from “request to be stricken” forms gathered by Daigle and his supporters and improperly subtracted that number from the recall petition.