2013 municipal election

June 4 elections

On June 4, 2013, Hattiesburg held a municipal election to decide the next mayor and city council. Incumbent Johnny DuPree, a Democrat, was challenged by Dave Ware, an independent and member of the city council. As the polls closed and vote counting began the race remained tight, until finally all of the votes within the city's 14 precincts had been counted and Dave Ware held a 148 vote lead. As officials worked late into the night counting absentee ballots DuPree gained a 33 vote lead over Ware.

The following day officials began sifting through 115 affidavit votes. The night of June 5, after officials had left City Hall, the vault containing a sealed ballot box and affidavit ballots was left open. After reviewing security footage and the seals on the ballot box officials determined that the ballots had not been tampered with. On Thursday, June 6, once the final count had been completed, officials announced that Johnny DuPree had won the election by just 37 votes (4775 for DuPree and 4738 for Dave Ware).

On June 24, Ware filed a 20-page challenge. The petition stated that 330 of the 581 absentee ballots were invalid due to not being properly signed or notarized, that 19 paper ballots were invalid due to not being properly signed, and that 12 of the 47 ballots were not properly initialed. The petition requested these votes to be thrown out and for Ware to be declared the winner of the election.

On June 27, a specially appointed judge, William Coleman, set July 23 as the date for a trial by jury to hear Ware's challenge.

On July 1, Johnny DuPree was sworn in as mayor for the fifth time.

Trial

On July 23 the trial began. The jury was made up of one black male, four black females, two white males, and five white females, with two white male alternates. The first few days of the trial were full of witness testimonies describing technical details of absentee and affidavit ballots, including technicalities disqualifying many of the ballots. On Friday, July 26, a witness testified that Chief Deputy Charles Bolton had promised to release him from jail in exchange for voting for DuPree. Another witness testified that he was out of town during the election, despite a signature in one of the poll receipt books indicating that someone had voted in his name. The following Monday as the trial resumed a third witness testified that she heard Chief Deputy Bolton tell someone "that son of a bitch is going to pay," referring to the witness who earlier testified that Bolton had made promises in exchange for a vote. Bolton then took the stand and denied that he had promised anything.

The following day, the attorneys for each side made their closing arguments. Ware summarized his argument that a number of absentee and affidavit ballots were illegal due to technicalities such as improperly signed and initialed envelopes. DuPree's team argued that no election is perfect and that Ware was trying to disenfranchise voters. After some deliberation the jury returned its verdict, saying that eight jurors were in favor of Dave Ware and four were in favor of Johnny DuPree. This was not a strong enough consensus, so the jury was ordered to return to deliberate and return a stronger verdict. When the jury emerged again nine were in favor of Ware and three were in favor of DuPree. However, after the judge polled the jury in open court, only eight were in favor of Ware. After polling the jury a second time and another 8-4 decision the judge asked each jury to sign a sheet of paper indicating their vote. The result was the same. With the jury unable to reach a decision the judge declared a mistrial, allowing DuPree to remain the mayor of Hattiesburg.

Shortly after the mistrial Dave Ware filed a motion requesting that the original 9-3 verdict returned by the jury be reinstated. During a hearing on August 15, the judge refused to reinstate the 9-3 verdict, and instead called for a special election to decide the mayor of Hattiesburg.

Special Election

On August 17, two members of the city council (Carter Carroll and Mary Dryden) met with Hattiesburg City Clerk Eddie Myers in his home to discuss his job. According to accounts of the meeting by the city council members and Myers, Carroll and Dryden requested Myers to resign or otherwise face a no-confidence vote by the city council. On the evening of August 20, Myers announced his resignation after serving fifteen years as city clerk, the same day that Governor Phil Bryant set September 24 as the date of the special election.

The term of all five members of the Hattiesburg Election Commission had expired June 30, requiring Mayor DuPree to appoint a new commission. Of the five original members, only three members wanted to return. Although some members of the city council warned that they would vote against any of the previous members of the commission, DuPree reappointed the three previous members, all black, and appointed two new candidates, both white. During the city council meeting on August 21 the city council voted to approve the two new members of the commission, but voted 3-2 (with the three white members, Bradley, Carroll, and Dryden voting against, and the two black members, Delgado and Naylor, voting for) against approving the three previous members of the commission. Councilwoman Delgado said the three white members were racist for approving the two white candidates and voting against the three black candidates, and Councilmen Carroll and Bradley said they warned DuPree not to appoint any members of the previous commission. DuPree later nominated three more candidates, all of them black, and on September 9 the city council unanimously approved all three.

Election results

The city held the special election on September 24. After counting regular votes (excluding absentee and affidavit votes) Dave Ware held a 32-vote lead over Johnny DuPree (Ware received a total of 6848 votes and DuPree a total of 6816).

The following day, September 25, officials worked to count more than 1000 absentee ballots. However, they quickly found problems. Many absentee ballots were not properly separated into accepted and rejected envelopes by poll managers. The last box to arrive, from the Rowan precinct, did not arrive until around 11:40 PM, and was locked but did not have a seal. Officials said the precinct did not receive a seal as part of its election packet, though an observer from the US Department of Justice and the Mississippi Department of State were with the ballot box at the precinct. An election commissioner accompanied the box from the precinct to City Hall, however she was in a separate car, leaving the locked ballot box, and the key, in the car with the poll manager and a poll worker. However, a poll watcher working for the Ware campaign at the Rowan precinct said that the votes counted at City Hall matched the votes he observed at the precinct. On September 27, as officials inspected and counted absentee ballots, a crowd of around two-dozen supports of each candidate gathered outside City Hall to rally for Ware and DuPree. By the end of the day, DuPree had emerged with a 118 vote lead over Ware (531 of the absentee votes went to DuPree, and 381 went to Ware).

The following day, September 28, officials began counting affidavit ballots. Late that afternoon, after nearly five days of sorting and counting ballots, the final tally was announced at 7512 votes for Johnny DuPree and 7305 votes for Dave Ware, giving DuPree 207 more votes than Ware. Ware announced he would not challenge the election and conceded to DuPree.

Allegations of misconduct

In March 2014, a lawsuit was filed against city attorney Charles Lawrence Jr. which alleged that Lawrence had used knowledge of a 2009 misdemeanor charge to have an absentee ballot voting for Ware thrown out, which violated attorney-client confidentiality. Lawrence meanwhile said that he had only requested a background check on the plaintiff to see if a felony charge had prevented the absentee ballot from counting. There was no felony charge.

On August 19, 2016, the United States Department of Justice said that it had received a letter from Bennie Thompson, a US representative from the 3rd district (Hattiesburg is in District 4, represented by Steven Palazzo), containing allegations that supporters of Johnny DuPree were targeted. In particular, the letter mentions the following:

• The resignation of the city clerk after being pressured by two members of the city council, Carter Carroll and Mary Dryden.
• The issuance of seven misdemeanor indictments of voter fraud
• The lawsuit against city attorney Lawrence
• Federal indictments against Kenneth Fairly (DuPree's campaign manager)
• Federal indictments against Charles Bolton (Forrest County Chief Deputy) for allowing prisoners to vote in the election and tax evasion