NAACP Overturns Vote on Local Branch President : Organization: The action follows a defeated candidate’s accusations of election violations.

The national board of the NAACP has overturned the results of an election held in the organization’s Ventura County branch in December and ordered a new vote.

The decision by board members of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People follows accusations of election violations by Oxnard resident Fred Jones, who had challenged incumbent John R. Hatcher III for president.

Only 66 of the branch’s 200 members voted in the election. Hatcher received 51 votes and Jones 15 in the Dec. 14 election. Hatcher and five other officers were installed in March.

The decision came during the NAACP’s annual convention in Houston earlier this month, spokesman Jim Williams said from the group’s Baltimore headquarters.

Jones, a past president of the county’s NAACP branch, asked for the board’s inquiry after citing numerous alleged infractions of NAACP election bylaws, such as ballots cast in two places on different days, lack of notification to all branch members about the election and a delay in counting ballots.

Jones said Thursday that he was “gratified by the decision. It will allow the membership to speak as a whole body, in that all people who are members will be notified of the process.”

Hatcher has maintained that the election was carried out according to NAACP guidelines and that no rules were violated.

Hatcher could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The allegations were reviewed at Jones’ request by the NAACP’s branch committee, which recommended that the election be overturned, Williams said. The national board accepted the recommendation.

A brief statement on the decision by the NAACP national branch committee said: “In view of the numerous irregularities, it is recommended that a new election be ordered.”

No date for the new election has been set, Williams said.

Hatcher, 59, has been president of the county’s NAACP branch for more than 10 years. Jones, 62, served as county branch president for six years during the 1960s and 1970s.

The dispute started shortly after the election. In a letter of complaint to the national office two days after the balloting, Jones said that the election did not follow guidelines outlined by the NAACP national office, including rules on how candidates were to be nominated.

In a brief Jan. 31 letter to Jones and 10 other members of the local branch who signed the complaint, NAACP officials dismissed the complaint and upheld the election.

But in a four-page letter to Hatcher dated March 4, the NAACP ordered the new election, saying that several regulations had been violated.

Jones said the second election will be monitored by an official appointed by the national organization, and that if defeated again he will accept the loss.

An impartial monitor “will get rid of the manipulations that occurred before,” Jones said. “That’s enough assurance for me.”