Good Sunday, Kossacks! Hope your day is going well. Mine started off quite nicely when, coffee still brewing, I woke to this front page headline, wherein Bertrand Gutierrez of The Winston Salem Journal blows the lid off of Watauga County Board of Elections' political corruption.
You see, it turns out that our Republican County Attorney, soundly rejected by the State Board of Elections for a position on the local BOE but nonetheless still conveniently installed as the official legal council for the local BOE, has actually been dreaming up all the Board's resolutions for precinct changes and establishing all the Board's agendas and revising all the Board's minutes from his company computer in his little old law office. And his little brother, local BOE member Luke Eggers, is AWOL.
This is my fourth diary on the monkey business of the Watauga County Board of Elections. You can read my earlier ones here and here and here.
That's right. This past week was no exception--we're still at it, fighting hard against all odds to preserve voting rights and combat voter suppression here in Watauga County. This week we've applied immense pressure on the State Board of Elections to refuse approval of a windowless, smelly, unventilated, BYOB nightclub called "Legends" as the polling location on the Appalachian State University campus. Oh, did I mention the futile attempts at keeping rain water out of the building?
We've got Disability Rights of North Carolina involved, we've sent pictures, videos and hundreds of emails and letters to the Executive Director. The State Board hasn't weighed in yet, although everyone expects them to approve this joke of a building in the name of their classic, "we don't like to get involved in local decision-making."
But just how are they (or are they) going to respond to this:
BOONE — Digital thumbprints left on resolutions approved along party lines by the Republican-controlled Watauga County Board of Elections show that the “author” of those resolutions is not the county elections director or board members. (snip)
...Eggers, also known as “Four,” is the county attorney and the brother of Luke Eggers, the elections board chairman. (snip)
Asked if Luke Eggers wrote any of them, Four Eggers said: “You’d have to ask him about that.”
Why?
“Because I don’t know what he finally sent out as a final draft — whether it was something I had helped him type up or whether it was something else he came up with.
No modifications had been made, Eggers was told, on the specific resolution he was talking about — to move the ASU polling place from the student union to another building used as a nightclub, known as Legends, at the edge of campus.
Luke Eggers and Aceto voted for it at the Sept. 3 meeting, against the advice of Hodges and Dave Robertson, an ASU official, as the Legends building has flooded three times in the past 10 months and has no backup power. And the student union no longer has one of the problems listed in the resolution — access for people with disabilities.
The “author” of that resolution is Four Eggers, according to the document properties.
“I think moving the Boone 2 precinct from the student union to Legends — I recall that coming from my office because I think he used my computer to send an email. But as far as sending other things, I’m not sure,” he said.
Alrighty then! So what we have here is a County Attorney who is illegally running the local Board of Elections from his office and sending his decrees via email on behalf of his brother, who may or may not be standing right there beside him having a sandwich. Who knows for sure because:
Luke Eggers did not respond to calls and emails asking who was writing the resolutions.
Cowboy Luke Eggers has done rode out of town! Here's betting a little hitch in his get-along will land him and the horse he rode in on back up in front of the State Board before too long.
Photo by Lonnie Webster
Oh, and the county attorney blew local Board member, Kathleen Campbell, off but good when she asked for some legal counsel:
“I am the Democratic member of the Board of Elections and I have a question I would like for you, as county attorney, to answer regarding the minutes of our meetings,” Campbell said to Eggers in a letter dated Aug. 27. “Can you give me a written opinion as to whether or not it is permissible for a single member to modify the minutes by changing the report of what action was taken?” (snip)
In his response to Campbell, Eggers said in part: “Typically, the county attorney provides legal advice as requested by the Board of Commissioners, the county manager, or the various boards of the county as a whole as needed. This policy was adopted by the county in an effort to control legal expenses, and avoid expenses not otherwise authorized by the county.”
Now I've told you before and I'll tell you again: we
Watauga County Democrats just aren't into rolling over. We grow strong and fighting Democrats around these parts, and we don't take too kindly to being told we
"cant do anything about it."
And we have no intention whatsoever of giving up hard-earned ground.