Perry County Commissioner tries to remove Albert Turner Jr. as chairman

Perry County Commissioner Ben Eaton tried unsuccessfully on Monday to remove Albert Turner Jr. as chairman due to charges against him of voter fraud.

Eaton made two motions to remove Turner as chairman of the Commission and be replaced by former chair Cedric Hudson, but the measure failed after a lack of a second. 

Turner Jr. has been indicted of one felony and one misdemeanor count of voter fraud that were announced in January by former District Attorney Michael Jackson and former State Secretary of State John Merrill in a press conference in Marion.

One indictment charges Turner with “stuffing the ballots into a machine (a tabulator) for the candidates he supports” at the voting place located at the Old Armory” during the May 24, 2022, primary.

The second charge claims that in the November election Turner presented multiple completed absentee ballots for mailing at the post office, an illegal practice known as “ballot harvesting.”