“Chucky” Hansen Out Of Senate

Despite an aggressive write-in campaign that morphed into what the VI Consortium is calling a ‘stick-in’ effort, longtime St. Croix Senator Alicia “Chucky” Hansen was not re-elected to serve as a lawmaker in the 31st Legislature.

Based on the latest unofficial count from the Virgin Islands Elections System made available to the public at 1:52 a.m. Wednesday, a total of 1,455 write-in votes have so far been recorded. Besides Hansen, there were at least two other write-in candidates, so it is currently unknown how many of the 1,455 votes were cast for Hansen. The Board of Elections will do a hand count of the write-in ballots in order to assign the correct number of votes to the respective candidate.

Late Wednesday night, around 9 p.m., numbers came in from the Elena L. Christian Junior High precinct. Out of a total of 893 votes, there were 147 write-in votes, not all being for Hansen, and only five sticker votes allotted for the veteran senator. Hansen had launched a last-minute effort to provide supporters with pre-printed stickers of her name to affix to the ballot. This was done to avoid any discrepencies with the proper spelling of the senator’s name.

The VI Consortium spoke with Elections Board member, Rupert Ross, Jr., on Wednesday night, who confirmed there are about 2,000 more ballots remaining to be counted from the last three precincts on St. Croix, including Lew Muckle Elementary, Alexander Henderson Elementary and John F. Kennedy. In addition, a little more than 600 ballots remain to be hand counted from early voting and 500 absentee ballots will also be hand counted.

In order for Hansen to be re-elected to the Senate, she would have to receive more than 3,011 write-in or sticker votes to beat out Sen. Nellie O’Reilly, who is currently at seventh place in the senatorial race.

Since August, Hansen had been embroiled in court battles surrounding her legitimacy to be elected to political office because of past crimes and convictions of failing to file taxes. After multiple court hearings and rulings, the Virgin Islands’ Supreme Court, on Oct. 24, just 11 days before the General Election, issued an order to remove Hansen’s name from the November 4 ballot.

As a result, new ballots were quickly printed without the senator’s name, prompting Hansen to launch a write-in effort.

As of 1:52 a.m. on Wednesday, the following is the latest count for the senatorial contest in the St. Croix District that have been released to the public. These numbers do not reflect votes from the Elena Christian precinct, which were recorded late Wednesday night.

NOTE: THE RESULTS BELOW SHOW POLL BALLOTS
AND NON-PARTY SCANNED BALLOTS ONLY

           Kurt Vialet (DEM).  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     5,194   12.42
           Novelle E. Francis, Jr. (DEM).  .  .  .     4,569   10.93
           Sammuel Sanes (DEM) .  .  .  .  .  .  .     3,568    8.54
           Kenneth Kenny Gittens (DEM)  .  .  .  .     3,382    8.09
           Neville James (DEM) .  .  .  .  .  .  .     3,129    7.48
           T. "Positive" Nelson (ICM).  .  .  .  .     3,052    7.30
           Nereida RiveraO'Reilly (IND) .  .  .  .     3,011    7.20
           Malcolm McGregor (DEM) .  .  .  .  .  .     2,441    5.84
           Naomi "Sandra" Joseph (ICM)  .  .  .  .     2,104    5.03
           Arthur A. Joseph (ICM) .  .  .  .  .  .     2,058    4.92
           Jamila Russell (IND).  .  .  .  .  .  .     2,052    4.91
           Diane Capehart (DEM).  .  .  .  .  .  .     1,942    4.65
           WRITE-IN (IND).  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     1,455    3.48
           Ignacio Llanos III (ICM)  .  .  .  .  .     1,085    2.60
           Miguel Quinones, Jr. (IND).  .  .  .  .       989    2.37
           Robert B. Moorhead (REP)  .  .  .  .  .       654    1.56
           Linus Louis Lacane (IND)  .  .  .  .  .       482    1.15
           Arthur Brown, Jr. (IND).  .  .  .  .  .       303     .72
           Dwight Nicholson (IND) .  .  .  .  .  .       221     .53
           Kevin Romain (IND)  .  .  .  .  .  .  .       113     .27