Four Eggers Votes To Remove 2 Republicans from Surry BOE

 

Four Eggers
Photo by Jesse Barber

Boone attorney Stacy Clyde Eggers IV ("Four") not only made the vote unanimous (4-0) to remove two members of the Surry County Board of Elections, he introduced the actual motion: I move that the State Board of Elections formally remove Tim DeHaan and Jerry Forestieri for "breach of duty and a violation of the oath of office.” (The other Republican member of SBOE, Tommy Tucker, was absent.)

The case was not complicated. DeHaan and Forestieri, the two appointed Republicans on the Surry BOE, had refused to sign the certifications for the final vote both last November and again on March 7th, after the special election for town of Dobson commission. The failure to sign is "a failure to comply to the laws that exist," as Eggers put it in his motion (quoted in Mt. Airy News). Their simple duty and obligation is to sign. 

Why? Why wouldn't they perform their mandated-by-law obligation to certify the results of two elections. The votes had been "canvassed," totally tabulated and verified. Simple Psychological explanation: DeHaan and Forestieri were upset that Fed Judge Loretta Biggs ruled back in 2018 (again) that the Republican voter ID law was unconstitutional. She threw it out. DeHaan especially attacked her for that perversion of what some see as a necessary step toward Christian Nationalism. In a letter to fellow board members, which Forestieri also signed, DeHaan threw down the insurrection gauntlet: "I don't view election law per NCSBE as legitimate or Constitutional," he wrote. Just too holy for his shirt.

They didn't allege fraud or any malfeasance in either election. They didn't challenge the accuracy of the vote, the functioning of the machinery. But someone had told them that he possy-tively knew for a fact that a neighbor of his from across the state line in Virginia had voted in both states. That was the sole excuse (as reported by the Mt. Airy News) that DeHaan and Forestieri offered at the hearing, someone who said he saw someone do something illegal. A rumor. One possible illegal vote in a county that went 75% for Donald Trump. 

What is the logic of that? The conclusion that "I, an official who certifies elections, am actually above the law."

Anyway, those two are off the Surry BOE. On the positive side, DeHaan and Forestieri can be martyrs now.