The Secretary of State is investigating errors made by Fulton County elections officials in the July 31 primary including races with gay candidates.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that "results showed several of Fulton's precincts had a voter turnout greater than 100 percent, including one with a 23,300 percent turnout."
The state is specifically investigating the Democratic primary for House District 58, which openly gay Rep. Simone Bell won with 58.7 percent of the vote. According to the AJC, 345 voters in a small section of Reynoldstown were incorrectly sent to vote in the District 59 race.
Atlanta police do not believe sexual orientation played a role in the deaths of two men who were slain after attending Black Gay Pride in 2010.
“At this time and even throughout a year and a half investigation, I don’t have any indication that their personal life or lifestyle factored into it at all,” Detective Michael Willis said in an interview this afternoon.
Derrick Burden, 22, was arrested by the APD's Fugitive Unit on April 23 on a warrant for the homicides of both Samuel Blizzard, 21, a Georgia State University student from Spring Cove, Va., and Calvin Streater, 26, of Atlanta.
An attorney representing a former bartender at the Atlanta Eagle says he plans to file a lawsuit on his client's behalf for false arrest and prosecution without probable cause.
Chris Lopez, who was a bartender the night the Atlanta Police Department raided the gay Midtown bar on Sept. 10, 2009, and was one of the eight people arrested, filed a complaint with the city's Municipal Clerk on Dec. 7, 2010, seeking $250,000 for "false arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution."
Lopez filed the complaint as the city settled for more than $1 million with patrons of the bar who sued the city in federal civil court saying their constitutional rights were violated.
When the city's scathing reports describing numerous illegal actions — illegal search and seizures, lying under oath, destroying evidence — made by APD officers during and after the raid were released last month, Lopez's attorney said legal action against the city is now likely.