A “Stop the Steal” flag flies outside a campaign rally with U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler on the eve of Georgia’s run-off election in Dalton, Georgia, U.S., January 4, 2021. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during his rally in Selma, North Carolina, U.S., April 9, 2022. REUTERS/Erin Siegal McIntyre/File Photo
Local Republican party official in North Carolina demanded access to voting equipment
He threatened to have county election director fired or her pay cut
Republican official claimed a ‘chip’ in voting machines used to steal election from Donald Trump
April 23 (Reuters) – A local Republican Party leader in North Carolina threatened to get a county elections director fired or have her pay cut unless she helped him gain illegal access to voting equipment, the state elections board told Reuters.
The party official, William Keith Senter, sought evidence to support false conspiracy theories alleging the 2020 election was rigged against former U.S. President Donald Trump. The previously unreported incident is part of a national effort by Trump supporters to audit voting systems to bolster the baseless stolen-election claims.
Senter, chair of the Surry County Republican Party, told elections director Michella Huff that he would ensure she lost her job if she refused his demand to access the county’s vote tabulators, the North Carolina State Board of Elections said in written responses to questions from Reuters. Senter was “aggressive, threatening, and hostile,” in two meetings with Huff, the state elections board said, citing witness accounts.
Senter did not respond to requests for comment.
Huff, who refused Senter’s demands, was disturbed by the incident of political intimidation. Such threats have become common nationwide since the 2020 election. Reuters has documented more than 900 threatening or hostile messages aimed at election officials in a series of investigative reports.
“It’s a shame, that it is being normalized,” Huff told Reuters. “I didn’t expect to get it here in our county. We are just trying to do our job by the law.”
Senter’s demands are a potential violation of state law. In a legal memo responding to community calls for a “forensic audit” of voting machines, Mark Payne, an attorney retained by the Surry County Board of Elections, wrote this week that it was illegal to provide access to voting machines to unauthorized individuals. Anyone threatens or intimidates an election officer could also face felony charges, according to a state statute.
Senter and a prominent pro-Trump election conspiracist, Douglas Frank, met with Huff on March 28, claiming “there was a ‘chip’ in the voting machines that pinged a cellular phone tower on Nov. 3, 2020, and somehow influenced election results,” the state election board said, calling the claim “fabricated disinformation.” Separately, in a public gathering that Huff did not attend, Senter threatened to have Huff’s pay cut, according to Huff, who said a person at the meeting told her about the threat.
Two days before meeting with Huff, Frank gave a speech in Dobson, a town in the rural county of 72,000 people on the northern border with Virginia, where he spoke about “debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election,” the board said. The day after the meeting, Frank, an Ohio math teacher, thanked his “patriot” hosts in a post to the messaging app Telegram about his trip to North Carolina and said he was “leaving behind a bonfire burning in good hands.”
Frank did not respond to requests for comment.
Exactly how Senter planned to retaliate against Huff remains unclear. He claimed to have the backing of Surry County commissioners, all five of whom are Republican, to take action against her. But neither Senter nor the commission has any official power over her job, which rests with the state election board. The state board has three Democratic members and two Republican members.
Huff, a former Republican, is now registered independent.
The county commission chairman, Bill Goins, declined to comment on Senter’s efforts but confirmed the commission could not fire Huff.
Patrick Gannon, spokesman for the state board of elections, said in a statement that the board reported the threats against Huff to state, federal and local law enforcement and would continue to report “any attempts to interfere with state or federal elections or harass or intimidate election officials.”
No one has been charged in the incident.
The North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
Dobson Police Chief Shawn Myers said he was not aware of the threats to Huff and did not believe his department had responded. Sheriff Steve Hiatt did not respond to requests for comment.
Two Republicans seeking statewide office are asking a federal judge to block the use of machines to tabulate the votes in Arizona in the 2022 election. The machines are unreliable because they are subject to hacking, contend Kari Lake, a gubernatorial hopeful, and Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state.
Neither Lake nor Finchem agreed to be interviewed on the lawsuit. But Lake, in an interview with Trump supporter Mike Lindell, said the litigation is the result of what she believes was a stolen 2020 election. “We know how tragic it was that this election (was) corrupted the way it was here in Arizona,” she said. “And we don’t want it to happen again.”
Lake last appeared on JMG last month when she stormed out of a 60 Minutes interview after falsely claiming that Capitol rioters are being held in jail without charges.
Lake, who has been endorsed by Trump, has called for imprisoning Arizona election officials.
As I’ve reported on multiple occasions, Lake’s campaign events have featured a cornucopia of cuckoo crackpots, including white supremacists, neo-Nazis, militia members, anti-vaxxers, and QAnon podcasters.
Lake is a former anchor for a local Fox News affiliate.
— YvonneWingettSanchez 🏜 (@yvonnewingett) April 24, 2022
As long as there is an auditable paper trail the counting machines are fine. If there is any doubt about the machines’ reliability ballots can be manually spot checked and recounted. In my county, after the machine counts are done, a random selection of precincts are always manually counted to spot-check the machines’ accuracy.
She probably wants to get rid of the machines’ efficiency and therefore create more opportunity for choas and alledged evidence of fraud during a slow and laborious hand count.
Arizona uses paper ballots already. What she is objecting to is an optical scanner. In NYS we went for paper ballot/optical scanner precisely so if there was any issue, the ballots can be hand counted. She’s another clueless Qmoron.
A city leader said Fine later tried to block the release of the text messages through a public records request and wanted a city attorney who was overseeing the request to be fired.
Fine denied he threatened to get the funding pulled or that he ever spoke about firing the city attorney.
In the text messages between Fine and West Melbourne City Councilman John Dittmore, obtained late Friday through a public records request, Fine told Dittmore that funding requests for the charity and the city in a state budget recently submitted for approval to Gov. Ron DeSantis would be on the governor’s chopping block.
The reason: city police officials had invited Jenkins to participate in a Special Olympics fundraising event by the West Melbourne Police Department, but had neglected to invite Fine.
“Jenkins just put your project and special Olympics funding on the veto list,” Fine wrote.
As Dittmore tried to intervene, the text messages show, Fine again said the Special Olympics funding was “at risk,” calling the move to invite Jenkins a “huge (expletive) by the bureaucrats.”
“Smart move is to cancel with apology for wading into politics,” he wrote.
Fine rejected Dittmore’s subsequent invitation to attend the event, which took place Friday at a Chick-Fil-A restaurant on Palm Bay Road, calling Jenkins a “whore.”
“I’m not going to jack (expletive) where that whore is at,” he wrote. “You guys will have to raise a lot of money given that’s who you want to honor, not the person who got you money in the budget.”
The $112.1 billion state budget, passed by the Florida Legislature and sent to the governor’s desk last month, included $1 million in various appropriations for the Special Olympics and a $460,000 flood risk reduction project affecting about 500 homes in West Melbourne’s Westbrooke neighborhood.
Dittmore told FLORIDA TODAY that, in a follow-up phone conversation with Fine, the State House representative objected when he found out the texts would be released by West Melbourne city attorney Morris Richardson as part of a public records request filed by Jenkins, and suggested Richardson should be fired.
“He was very displeased and frustrated with the fact that our city attorney made the decision that some of this stuff was going to be public,” Dittmore said. “He made references to the fact that we should consider terminating his employment.”
Fine denied Saturday that conversation ever took place and said he never threatened to ask DeSantis to veto the items. He said the “veto list” comment was a remark about the “negative attention” brought to the event by Jenkins, who attempted to “politicize” it when she posted about the event on social media.
“When you have someone like Jennifer Jenkins come and politicize charity events, it creates problems,” Fine told FLORIDA TODAY. “If you want to be in a charity event, fine. But when you go on Facebook and you politicize it, you put it at risk.”
Fine did not answer further questions pressing him on the nature of the “risk” he referenced.
A review of Jenkins’s Facebook account in the lead-up to the event shows several posts in which Jenkins touted the fundraiser with pictures of her in a mock jail uniform, holding a placard reading “#BailJenkins,” a riff on Fine’s “#JailJenkins” slogan he has often used in his own Facebook posts.
The fundraiser event was billed as participants “bailing out” various community leaders, who were “jailed” on the roof of Chick-Fil-A, according to ads posted by the West Melbourne Police Department.
While Fine said he did have the ability to ask DeSantis to veto line items in the state budget, he denied asking DeSantis to do so.
“If I (had the intention to do that), I would have. I haven’t. Never planned to. Didn’t do it,” he said.
Messages seeking comment to DeSantis’s press office were not immediately returned Saturday. FLORIDA TODAY has reached out to Special Olympics Florida.
Richardson said the city never intended to be caught in the crossfire of the fight between Jenkins and Fine. The invitation to attend the fundraiser was sent to the entire school board and to Brevard Superintendent Mark Mullins, he said. Only Jenkins responded that she would attend.
“In organizing this fundraiser for the Special Olympics, the City of West Melbourne certainly did not intend to become involved in an unrelated political dispute,” Richardson said in an email. “I trust that better angels will prevail, and that our leaders will not allow this to impact worthy projects and causes.”
Dittmore said a since-deleted Facebook post he made late last week attempting to apologize to Fine for Jenkins’ involvement in the event was an attempt to “smooth over” the situation before it “got out of hand.” He said he deleted the post when supporters of Fine and Jenkins began to argue in the comment section.
Dittmore said he was just looking out for city residents, who badly need the flood risk protection funding.
“My whole goal was not to let this politicization affect the City of West Melbourne,” he said.
Why is Fine feuding with Brevard School Board member Jennifer Jenkins?
“I’m not surprised by it,” Jenkins said of the incident Saturday, adding that she felt Fine had tried pulling similar attacks against her in the past.
“It’s typical for someone to attack a woman with sexual innuendos when they are threatened by their strength,” she said of Fine’s “whore” comment. “I’m no stranger to these attacks from him. He has constantly gotten a pass for his defamation and libel, and he’s just been emboldened by those who are supposed to be holding him accountable.”
Fine and Jenkins have been embroiled in a public and increasingly rancorous feud in recent months, stemming from Fine’s anger with Jenkins over her support last year of a mask mandate for Brevard Public Schools. The mandate, which was later revoked, bucked a state order from DeSantis banning such mandates.
The case was tossed after the court agreed with Fine’s attorneys that the Facebook posts — in which Fine called Jenkins “mentally ill” and a “child abuser” for her support of the mask mandate, and repeatedly suggested she had cheated on her husband — was protected political speech.
Criminal complaints made last year containing a host of allegations against Fine by Jenkins and Robert Burns, a Brevard County political consultant with whom Fine has also had a long-standing feud, were dismissed by the State Attorney’s Office.
An investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found the complaints — which included allegations of corruption of a public servant by threat, cyberintimidation and stalking — arising from Fine’s frequent Facebook posts about Jenkins and Burns either did not rise to the level of a crime or were permitted under Florida law.
Fine made national headlines this week with a bill he filed in the recent special legislative session that stripped the Walt Disney Co. of special self-governing rights it was granted over a 25,000-acre parcel in Central Florida that serves as home to its Florida theme parks.
The bill was approved by both the Florida House and Senate and signed Friday by DeSantis.
Ethics expert: This is what you would see in a dictatorship
The legality of Fine’s threats was not clear Saturday. An expert in political ethics who spoke to FLORIDA TODAY said she wasn’t sure if Fine had broken any laws.
However, Beth Rosenson, an associate professor in political science at the University of Florida, said it was certainly unethical.
“To threaten the city, that if they don’t disinvite her and apologize that he’s going to work to get the project vetoed, that’s an ethical violation of what he’s supposed to be doing in his job,” said Rosenson, author of “The Shadowlands of Conduct: Ethics and State Politics.”
“It sounds like a pretty egregious, sort of petty way to behave,” she said. “That’s not why people elect somebody.”
Fine’s efforts reminded her of the “personalized politics” often displayed by dictators, she said, where those seeking political favors are required to “bow down” and show fealty to leaders’ demands.
“It’s not how democracy is supposed to operate,” she said. “So I think there’s some pretty deep, profound implications of what he’s doing.”
Florida Republican Rep. @VoteRandyFine threatened to block state funding for the Special Olympics because he wasn’t invited to an event and a school-board member he doesn’t like was. Fine is the same guy who suggested protestors should be run over.https://t.co/oE6QDEcWuQ
Rep. Randy Fine just went down a long list of companies and universities who “messed with” him and the legislature and how he made them pay. Wow this was a crazy ass meeting
Florida state Representative Randy Fine was a cosponsor of the state’s new anti-cyberbullying law. Now, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating him for violating the very law he helped pass. https://t.co/Qc4whVaW3p
NEW: Jewish GOP FL State Rep suggests that all Palestinians are terrorist animals, and beneath "pigs, rats, and snakes," which are considered vermin in the Hebrew faith#TheUndercurrentpic.twitter.com/T74vh7MEhv
This is what happens when the Republicans in Florida are in power. They bully and throw tantrums like @VoteRandyFine He wants them to lock me up bc of my peaceful sit-in. Well he threatens to get funding vetoed when his feelings are hurt. #FLPol#disneyhttps://t.co/RkNXKswlpo
"Randy Fine has taken over $20K from Disney in political contributions. This woke money he has not returned," says @annaforflorida. "If you want to talk about free markets, I'm your girl…Florida Republicans want Disney to get back in line, continue donating to their coffers." pic.twitter.com/1tQtATDpdX
It may come as little surprise that many Americans are besieged by medical bills, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic grinds on. Perhaps more eye-opening is that this is often for debt they have already paid or do not actually owe.
In a new report, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that people’s most common debt collection complaints last year had to do with efforts to collect on a bill that they said did not belong to them.
“In medical debt collection complaints, this issue makes up nearly half of complaints and, importantly, complaint volume about this topic has been increasing,” the federal agency said, noting that such bills often end up on people’s credit reports and force them onto a bureaucratic hamster wheel to clear their financial record.
Between 2018 and 2021, public complaints about collection attempts for medical bills consumers said they did not owe jumped 31%, the CFPB found. Roughly 1 in 5 U.S. households carries debt related to health care, according to federal data. Medical bills are the most commonly reported item on consumer credit reports, according to regulators.
“People also report learning of an outstanding medical bill only after experiencing a drop in their credit score and being told that only paying the bill would remove the negative collections information from their credit report,” the CFPB added.
750,000 complaints
The CFPB said that in 2021 it sent more than 750,000 complaints to roughly 3,400 companies for them to review. Among the agency’s other findings:
The median medical debt in the U.S. is $310.
In 2021, 15% of debt collection complaints were about attempts to collect on a medical bill.
Consumers receiving collection notices for a medical bill often report being unfamiliar with the listed provider.
Consumers also report that collection notices often contain large amounts of personal medical information.
Many Americans say they pay medical bills to avoid adverse financial and privacy consequences — even if they feel the debt isn’t valid.
Communities with more minority or low-income individuals, veterans, and young adults are more likely to have medical bills reported on their credit reports.
“Many Americans feel forced to pay medical bills that they have already paid or never owed to begin with,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. “The credit reporting system should not be used as a weapon to coerce patients into paying medical bills they do not owe.”
In March, leading credit rating firms Equifax, Experian and TransUnion said they planned to drop most medical debt from consumers’ credit reports starting this summer.
Congress last year sought to address the problem of runway medical bills by passing the “No Surprises Act,” which protects people with health insurance from getting billed for receiving emergency medical care outside of an insurer’s network.
Under the law patients are still responsible for any deductibles and copays they normally would have to pay under their plan, but they may only be billed at their plan’s in-network rate.
“Based upon this review, we do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children even though it does not rise to the level of a crime.” The group complaining about the books also wanted to ban a book about the civil rights movement.
The Florida chapter of Moms 4 Liberty (M4L), a far-right “parents’ rights group”, has filed a criminal complaint against the Indian River County School District for having library books with LGBTQ themes. Even more concerning was the local sheriff’s response to the group’s complaint.
This story began in November 2021 when M4L told the district school board to remove 51 “pornographic or sexually explicit” books from school libraries. M4L’s list reportedly included LGBTQ-inclusive titles such as “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”
M4L then submitted a criminal complaint to the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office. After the supervisor of the office’s child sex crime unit conducted “a thorough review”, Sheriff Eric Flowers wrote that the reviewed books’ content “do not allow us to make an arrest in this case.”
“However,” Flowers wrote, “based upon this review, we do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children even though it does not rise to the level of a crime.”
“Some of the content in these books is highly questionable and I certainly would not want my child to have access to it,” he concluded. “I would recommend that the district continue to review their policy to allow for stricter oversight prior to books such as these being made available to children.”
Flowers’ response is concerning because it helps add legitimacy to M4L’s true aim: banning books without full transparency or oversight. The district could start quietly removing titles from school libraries just to avoid public controversy, and one study suggests that many schools do exactly that.
Groups like M4L regularly pressure school boards to ban books without going through the official district policies and public transparency protocols meant to ensure that schools don’t violate First Amendment prohibitions against government officials banning free expression, a recent study by the free-speech organization PEN America found.
Many of the books removed from schools libraries don’t even meet the legal definitions for “obscenity” and “pornography”, PEN reported, despite M4L’s claims to the contrary.
For example, M4L has sought to ban a book about police brutality against 1960s civil rights demonstrators because it had a “negative view of firemen and police.” The group wanted to ban a book about the church’s persecution of 17th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei, writing, “Where is the HERO of the church?” The group also opposed a picture book about seahorses because it contained a “discussion of the male carrying the eggs.”
According to her own parents, she’s not a particularly gifted athlete, but the middle schooler is now banned from playing on the field hockey team she helped create.
“Kentucky’s a national embarrassment today, and it’s shameful that lawmakers would prioritize attacking one trans seventh grader, rather than the real issues facing Kentuckians,” he said. “It’s a sad day in our Commonwealth.”
Wells, who testified against the bill in February, agreed.
“It’s disgusting that this bill is even suggested,” she told legislators. Because of the passage of SB 83, Wells will be barred from playing on the team she helped to create.
Kentucky’s Republican-controlled House and Senate overrode a veto by Gov. Andy Beshear (D) to enact a law barring transgender girls from playing on middle and high school girls’ sports teams. The governor had vetoed Senate Bill 83 the prior week, saying that it likely violates Constitution’s equal rights protections.
Proponents of the bill insist it is necessary to ensure that cisgender girls don’t lose opportunities to competitors who are transgender. But there is no evidence of risk to cisgender athletes, and the state’s only known trans female athlete is actually responsible for increasing athletic opportunities for girls in Kentucky.
“Transgender children deserve public officials’ efforts to demonstrate that they are valued members of our communities through compassion, kindness, and empathy, even if not understanding,” Beshear wrote in a statement.
Despite the rhetoric of trans athletes dominating women’s sports, state efforts to ban transgender youth from participating in athletics are often legislating against an exceptionally small number of students. Kentucky’s actions echo those in Utah, where legislators likewise overturned a veto by the state’s governor to push through a ban on trans athletes that applies to very few students. According to Gov. Spencer Cox (R), only four transgender youth are currently competing in athletics in the state.
“Four kids and only one of them playing girls sports,” Cox said. “That’s what this is all about. Four kids who aren’t dominating or winning trophies or taking scholarships. Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few. I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live.”
Photo: Shutterstock
12-year-old Fischer Wells is the only known transgender youth athlete in Kentucky.Photo: Fairness Campaign
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