Few places have felt the effects of voter denial more than Buckingham County, Virginia.
In January, Republicans gained control of the local board of elections and filed unsubstantiated voter fraud claims targeting the work of the then-registrar, Lindsey Taylor, who had been running elections in the county since 2019 and considered herself nonpartisan. .
Taylor resigned in March when it became clear they wanted him gone. Two other members of her staff resigned with her, after a deputy registrar resigned in February for the same reasons. The exodus of staff temporarily left the county without a functioning elections office.
12th April, Luis Gutiérrez took over as the new registrar, quickly establishing himself in the community as a combative figure.
That came as no surprise to the office’s former occupants. Gutierrez had helped promote the unsubstantiated fraud allegations that led Taylor and his staff to quit their jobs.
“The simplest explanation for the elections here in Buckingham County is that they are rigged,” Gutierrez said at a public meeting of the county board of elections in January.
But the turbulence it is far from over for the county. On Tuesday, Gutierrez was fired by the Buckingham County Board of Elections, which oversees the office, the latest development in the ongoing crisis of community confidence in its electoral system.
Community members in Buckingham County, a rural and conservative community with many longtime residents, have stormed local board of elections and county government meetings in recent months, protesting loudly against the unrest. in your local democratic system.
Many worry about what will happen in November, warning that seasoned poll workers will choose not to return because fraud allegations made in January named and criticized volunteers.
The allegations of wrongdoing “have really torn the fabric of the community,” said Joyce Gooden, an independent who grew up in Buckingham County and has served as a poll worker.
Gooden was falsely accused of not being eligible to run in the polls in January because she is an appointed official on the county planning commission. Only elected officials are prohibited from serving as poll workers in Virginia. She said she has tried to talk other poll workers out of quitting when they tell her they don’t want to come back.
Buckingham County is dealing with a problem that the rest of the country is facing as well. Unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, brought forward by former President Donald Trump and others, have damaged Americans’ confidence in their electoral system, often leaving local officials in the crosshairs as they try to organize elections.
«We are now engaged in a major civil strife in our community,» Maggie Snoddy, a local Democrat, said at a Board of Supervisors meeting Monday, «testing whether this community or any community so conceived and dedicated to free and fair elections and the constitutional right of every citizen to vote can last a long time.»
‘If I told you, I would have to kill you’
There is no evidence of voter fraud or widespread electoral problems in Buckingham, according to local authorities and the county board of elections’ own review of the complaints in January.
However, a Republican member of that board, Karen Cerwinski, hired Gutierrez to serve as interim registrar in April. She acted alone, without the legally required quorum for election board business, after two other members of the 3-person election board electoral board resigned in the wake of election staff resignations and the backlash that followed.
In his brief time as registrar, Gutiérrez struck residents as hostile and, at times, alarming.
Bob Abbott, a disabled combat veteran, stood up Monday night at a Board of Supervisors meeting during the public comment period and said Gutierrez had refused to share his name when they met in April and only He said: “If I told you, I have to kill you.
«Maybe I’m not the best person» to tell him that, Abbott said, citing his military career. “I volunteered to go to Afghanistan twice to defend the integrity of the elections.”
Woody Hanes, a Democrat who was sworn in to serve on the election board the same day Gutierrez took office, said he also threatened her.
She said he asked her if she was trying to get him fired, which she denied.
“And then he said, ‘Well, if I find out you’re lying to me. I’m going to get you fired. I’m going to go to the judge and get you fired,’” Hanes recalled. After she reported the incident to the county and shared a copy with Gutierrez, Hanes said, she later apologized.
Thomas Jordan Miles III, a Democrat on the Board of Supervisors, sent two requests for information from the registrar’s office, citing Virginia’s freedom of information request rules, and received an angry email of nearly 1,000 words from the registrar.
In the email, first reported by the Virginia MercuryGutierrez said he would add a $200 «convenience fee» to any of Miles’ requests for information under Virginia’s FOIA laws and complained that the requests were not honoring him.
“You have bothered me for the last time. No more playing nice Mr. Miles,” he wrote in the email, in which he suggested Miles get a job at Walmart to pay for FOIA requests.
Miles has prepared a lawsuit to try to force the office’s compliance with the FOIA request and plans to file it on Wednesday. His attorney informed the election board of the planned lawsuit last week. Gutierrez said last week that he never intended the convenience fee to be «real or true» and that he was just very upset with Miles.
Gutierrez spoke at length with NBC News last week but declined to answer many questions.
“I am qualified for this job, and it is that simple. I am qualified for this job, but I am an outsider. I’m not from this county so they hate me,” she said.
Those qualifications are unclear: Gutierrez said he owns and runs businesses, but declined to offer details: «I’m not going to disclose that because I don’t have to, but I know what I’m talking about.»
He says he attended the University of Virginia, St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, and Liberty University to earn a Ph.D. He He signs his emails with «PhD(abd),» a slang term for PhD candidates who have completed coursework, or «everything but a dissertation.»
He declined to offer details about his past professional experience. Public records and an email from him to Miles say he is 62, but when asked to confirm that fact, Gutierrez declined.
My life is not your business, or anyone else’s. I’m here to do a job until I’m killed, killed, or fired. I’m not leaving. Do I understand?» she said after being asked if she was resigning, before hanging up a call Monday afternoon.
Cerwinski said Tuesday that he was fired for lying on his job application. Gutierrez did not respond to a request for comment about his firing or comments from Abbott and Hanes.
quorum of one
Cerwinski is also under fire for his role in hiring Gutierrez.
In mid-April, Cerwinski, who did not respond to requests for comment, called an emergency meeting of the election board. At that time, she was the only member.
He took over the chair, hired Gutierrez and adjourned, according to notes documenting the meeting briefly posted on the registrar’s website. and tweeted by Miles. Virginia law requires that two members of a board of elections be present to constitute a quorum for official business.
Hanes was sworn in the day after Gutierrez was hired, but said Cerwinski declined to share details of Gutierrez’s hiring or the other requests.
Cheryl White, president of the county’s NAACP chapter, told the Board of Supervisors meeting Monday that three qualified black people had applied for the position, which paid Taylor $78,000 a year, but never heard back.
«The Buckingham County Recorder’s Office has lost all their election staff, the recorder, the deputy recorder, the office workers – who is there to run our elections? Will we be ready for a fair election in November, when we will have more of 20 people on the ballot?» he said, noting that the job listing was hard to find.
Miles, the Democrat who angered the registrar by filing public information requests, said he hoped the registrar’s firing would «start to bring back normalcy and stability» but warned that local Republicans who first pushed the fraud allegations are still being a persistent force.
“We have been on a tumultuous journey started by a small faction that is still active in our community. Until this faction is stopped, we will continue to have these unnecessary battles and distractions that do not represent the people of Buckingham County,» he said in a statement.
Hanes said he did not know about the registrar’s firing until Tuesday morning, days after Cerwinski spoke with Gutierrez about the resignation on Friday. (Gutiérrez refused to resign, Cerwinski said later.)
Still, he’s optimistic the community can move forward, if the election board can lead.
“The community needs to heal and we need to move on,” he said. “We need to take responsibility and I am one of them. I just need to show strong leadership in doing that. We have to take responsibility.»