Maggie Valley gets new elk crossing signs

are not public records under North Carolina law.

LeRoy Cossette, a Haywood County Republican who Inman said identifies as an NCEIT member, filed the exact same request as Miller, and has also signed up to be an atlarge early voting observer.

Guy R. Smith, a registered Republican and resident of Shelby, is Cleveland County’s NCEIT coordinator and as such will be in position to observe reports of interactions with voters.

In an Oct. 16 Facebook post, Smith calls one of NASCAR’s few Black drivers, Bubba Wallace, a “house n-word” and “ghetto scumbag.”

Cleveland County is 21% Black.

Bobbi Foley is Halifax County’s NCEIT coordinator. Foley believes that it’s legal to kill a baby in California up to 28 days after birth. Foley’s voter registration could not be located.

Barry Peppers, a registered Republican, is Haywood County’s NCEIT coordinator. Peppers presented misinformation to Haywood County commissioners earlier this year, incorrectly stating that Haywood ranks first in the state in violent crime, that the county emptied its jails during COVID and that 87,000 armed IRS agents are about to be hired.

Linda Harper, a registered Republican, is Wayne County’s NCEIT coordinator. Wayne has posted information labeled false by fact checkers regarding “rigged” voting machines in Georgia.

June Reeves, a registered Republican, is Iredell County’s NCEIT coordinator. Reeves has promoted election conspiracy events hosted by Mike Lindell, who is currently defending himself against a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from a voting machine company.

Even the extreme right-wing “news” channel OAN refused to screen Lindell’s conspiratorial documentary without first prefacing it with a “hilariously massive” disclaimer.

Reeves has also made posts falsely impugning the legitimacy of the COVID-19 vaccine.

While North Carolina residents have the right to apply to be partisan poll observers, the troubling public statements made by some members of the NCEIT raise legitimate concerns over their ability to remain objective while carrying out their duties.

Democrats, on the other hand, don’t have plans to spend time or resources on poll observers — at least in Haywood County.

“There’s no interest within our executive committee to work as an observer,” Campbell said. “I had one observer who worked at the Senior Center during the May Primary Election and she regretted it — said she’d never do it again — and that it was boring and totally unnecessary. What she observed is how well the voting assistants work together even though they’re from different political parties and how much pride they take in their work. She said that it’s a ridiculous waste of time, and it sends the wrong message to the poll workers, which is, Republicans don’t trust anyone, not even their own.”

SMN News Editor Kyle Perrotti contributed reporting to this story.

Gentlemen:

“I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things.” That shorthands my inquiry into the basis for your vote to appeal Joan Week’s 28 year journey to justice, her prevailing at trial, and your subversion of that Judgment. My futile public records requests to identify and understand the basis for your decisions waylaying that journey, as provided under the law, and your generally feckless response, may be of interest to Swain County citizens.

From the beginning, as I have explained to you in emails ad nauseum, I expected: a letter/memo to the Commission from either Sedgwick Insurance Company’s attorney, or the County Attorney, setting forth the errors of law alleged to have been made by Judge Pope in his Judgment in favor of Joan Weeks; competent minutes of the executive sessions memorializing an oral presentation of such by either attorney, should such have ever occurred; an outline of the appellate brief; some other writing providing you with “reasonable reliance” on the opinion of counsel for your support of an appeal.

Your incompetence/blythe abdication of your responsibilities in the matter, however, is manifested in numerous ways: 1. Failure to insure a record of Commission actions in litigation decisions, where the Commission represents the defendant citizens, as contemplated by the legislature; 2. Failure of any Commissioner to attend the mediation session connected to the appeal, although required by the insurance contract, and demanded by sheer decency, resulting in total abandonment of Commission authority to the attorney for the insurance company; 3. Failure to investigate the “disappearance” of a waiver alleged to have been signed by Weeks regarding the matter; 4. Failure to explain why the Commission paid $5,000 to the insurance company, permitting the reasonable conclusion that the purposes was to buy off the insurance company from proceeding against misfeasance by the Commission or its officials; 5. Failure to at least question why the insurance contract ever provided for the Commission’s surrender to the insurance company of its sovereign authority in all matters related to litigation; 6. Failure to at least review the time and charge sheets of “your” attorney in the matter, even though he more accurately represented the interest of Sedgwick Insurance; 7. Failure to competently employ the actual County Attorney, where the minutes do not reflect her input, while led around by the attorney for the insurance company; 8. And, not least, the dangerously childish Ignorance involved in protesting – two of you at least - that “judicial process” exists equally with either the law or the dispensation of justice. Given the pervasive exercise of the judicial process by the well heeled at the expense of the average person, in this case, the 12 billion dollar capitalized Sedgwick Insurance vs. Joan Weeks, the result, relied upon by practitioners, was the economic bludgeoning of Ms. Weeks into settlement. You should not celebrate your addiction to the “toxic poison of unaccountable power” by preposterously proposing dedication to a process which principal concern is judicial economy; you simply continued the successful bad faith dealing by all the Swain County Commissions in the Weeks matter.

How one of you could not ask relevant questions in the commission of this bad faith perpetration upon one of the county’s more notable employees, one who had finally obtained justice after petitioning for more than two decades, and the expenditure of $15,000 of her own unrecoverable money, is indeed the question. What possibly could have prompted you to just blithely not only disregard the equities of the matter, but also the statistically significant probability of your not prevailing on appeal? Was it misogyny, competence envy, a suppurating arrogance, or simply that you felt your $5,000 investment bought you the excuse for not acting as responsible elected officials?

Your tawdry attention to the matter of Joan Weeks v. Swain County for her retirement benefits, your abandonment of an obligation to deal fairly and as representatives of the people of Swain County, your lack of respect for the law encoding eventual disclosure of the record of your “deliberations” in the matter, is not negated by any possibly commendable acts in other matters, and does make one thing eminently clear: not one of you has either the intellect, decency, or ethical integrity to serve as a representative of a just people.