He adds that he has been more withdrawn because of his divorce. But that’s not all. “I’ve really been disgusted,” Royster says. “I’ve heard a lot of people privately talk about this. I think literally everyone knows what happened, but my disgust is, not one of the people in positions of power have stepped up publicly and called for investigations, and that’s disgusting to me. And frankly, it should be to all voters.” And Royster isn’t apologetic about loudly calling attention to the voter fraud. “When nobody was acting, Adam, Chris and I are thinking, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ ” Royster says. “It was just like a trip. We started getting really loud: ‘Hey, everybody, look at what’s going on here.’ I imagine most people didn’t know what was going on. … Your typical person on the street, maybe your typical voters saw, ‘Those guys are just mad because they lost by a vote. They’re just a sore loser.’ Even people who voted for me probably said, ‘Let it go.’ That’s what generally happened. The typical person doesn’t want to hear it. It’s noise to them, and the people who perpetrated it wanted to suppress it.” Meanwhile, Royster, who considers himself a conservative Democrat, has backed slowly away from the local Democratic Party. He says the party has also backed away from him. “Absolutely, I was totally abandoned by the local Democrats,” Royster says. “The local Democrats were all afraid of pushback.” The Rizzo-Royster election is no longer a topic of discussion among local Democrats. Mike Sanders, who until recently was chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party, would not discuss the issue. Tom Wyrsch, chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Committee, says the Missouri Court of Appeals’ snuffing out Royster’s last recount attempt ended the issue. “He [Royster] hasn’t participated since then, and neither has his wife, Carol,” Tom Wyrsch tells The Pitch. “But they would be welcome back. I have no animosity toward them.” KCEB chairwoman Thornberry tells The Pitch that the commissioners are taking Royster’s allegations seriously. “We’ve done our own investigation since then [2010] and we’ve continued to investigate,” Thornberry says, adding that the commission has forwarded its information to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office and the FBI. Royster isn’t satisfied. He believes the election board screwed up in administering his election and demands that it acknowledge the error. “If all the demands were met, it would do a few things for me,” Royster says. “It would mean they actually did what they were supposed to do, which is investigate allegations of illegal electioneering and illegal voter fraud. That’s something they’re supposed to investigate. If they do that, I’m not going to pat them on the back. That was something they were supposed to do three years ago.”
E-mail steve.vockrodt@pitch.com
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