Source: WRAL
A Republican Party leader in Surry County, NC recently threatened to have a county elections director fired or to have her pay cut unless she gave him illegal access to voting equipment, according to WRAL.
William Keith Senter, the Surry County Republican Party Chairman, was apparently seeking evidence that would support the debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against former President Donald Trump.
Senter had an initial meeting with Michelle Huff, the Surry County elections director, where he brought along Dounglas Frank, a teacher from Ohio who travels the country spreading false claims of election fraud. Huff told WRAL that, “They came to tell me that there was lots of voter fraud in Surry County, and they were doing me a favor”, and that Frank and Senter “wanted to show me where I could remove people who were fraudulent voters.”
Huff gave the pair challenge forms to identify fraudulent voters, but has yet to receive a single name from either of them.
Huff went on to tell WRAL that Senter is telling people that the county’s DS200 ballot tabulators, which are used at polling sites both in Surry County as well as around the state to count paper ballots, switch people’s votes, aren’t secure, and are connected to the internet.
Huff emphasized that all three of those statements are not correct.
After this initial meeting, Senter returned to demand access to various records. At both meetings, Senter repeatedly threatened to have Huff fired or to have her pay cut for not allowing him illegal access to the county’s voting tabulators.
Unfortunately, incidents like this one have been happening all over the country. Reuters, first to report this Surry County incident, has documented more than 900 threatening or hostile messages aimed at election officials in a series of investigative reports.
