The November election of a school board member in Shenandoah County who did not disclose a prior felony conviction when filing to run for office has been officially challenged by his opponent. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
L.M. "Mike" Scheibe II won a seat on the school board last month with 58% of the vote. But, as WMRA previously reported, he pled guilty to a felony in 2004 in Pennsylvania – and did not disclose that conviction on his certificate of candidate qualification.
His opponent, Brent Wilson, filed a challenge to the election's validity in the Shenandoah County Circuit Court on Thursday.
BRENT WILSON: This legal action has nothing to do with politics or personalities or who won. It's about contesting the results to make sure the law was followed in this process.
Wilson is a lifelong valley resident who runs a small accounting business. He argues that Scheibe is ineligible to hold public office in Virginia on multiple grounds. For one, there's his failure to disclose the felony on a form that reads, "knowingly making any untrue statement or entry in this document is a felony under Virginia law."
Additionally, although Scheibe's voting rights were automatically restored in Pennsylvania, that state's constitution says that no one convicted of an "infamous crime" can hold "any office of trust or profit." The complaint cites a Pennsylvania Supreme Court case which documents the state's legal history of considering felonies to be "infamous crimes." This raises the legal question of his right to hold public office in Virginia, too.
WILSON: His voting rights were restored, but in Pennsylvania, his right to run for office was not automatically restored as the voting rights were.
Wilson's complaint asks the court to declare Scheibe ineligible to serve on the school board, and declare the election void. No hearings have been scheduled yet. WMRA reached out to Scheibe on Friday morning and has not heard back yet.
