Here’s an excerpt from the Asheville Citizen-Times article:
A new Republican appointee to the Buncombe County Board of Elections wants to force out longtime Elections Director Trena Parker, a move Parker supporters say would undermine public confidence in the voting process.
The other new Republican appointee to the three-member board declined to be sworn in this week, saying he does not want to be involved in an effort to fire Parker. That stalled for now the move by member Robert Knapp.
Knapp said he wants Parker out of the job she has held since 1994 because of her role in last year’s disputed District 2 county commissioner election that saw Democrat Ellen Frost narrowly defeat Republican Christina Merrill.
“If (Parker) had not been in there, Christina Merrill would be our commissioner,” Knapp said.
Republicans and Democrats who support Parker say she has run the office well in a nonpartisan fashion and handled issues with the Frost-Merrill race as directed by the county and state elections boards.
“I think Trena’s done an excellent job, and I have no fault with her at all,” said Robert Van Wagner, who was the GOP representative on the board over the past seven years.
“Good morning. I’m Robert Knapp, semi-retired certified public accountant. I am a self-funded candidate for Buncombe County Commissioner District 3, same as 116, so happy to serve, and so proud of Tim Moffitt for what he has done.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ1huROB9FY
In the years I’ve served as a Buncombe County elections worker, Trena Parker has steered a competent and remarkably non-partisan course at the Board of Elections.
Clearly, such behavior merits her immediate replacement by a Republican party hack willing to further the causes of voter suppression and disempowering opposition to the Conservative agenda by any means necessary. Extra points for job applicants who believe prayer is the proper response to computer glitches.
And lest we forget how this Christina Merrill nonsense happened in the first place – the dividing up of the County into districts, led by Tim Moffitt, was botched. In an attempt to give a GOP candidate in District 2 an edge, they decided they had to carve out Warren Wilson (“America’s Most Liberal College”) from the surrounding area & put it in the the same district as Asheville. It’s one of the most patently gerrymandered things you’ll ever see – a prong extended out from Asheville, all the way out to grab all (they thought) those college kids & pointy-head professors & consign them to the liberal ghetto.
But because they didn’t pay attention to the pesky details, like election law, or where people actually “lived”, etc., all they did was cut Warren Wilson in half, enraging the school population to go out in droves & vote on Election Day, giving the Democrats the winning margin in District 2, and the Commission.
They are so bound and determined for the GOP minority to rule the majority-Democratic Buncombe County, that they tripped over their (ahems) & screwed the pooch instead. Trena Parker had to make sense of all that, with a giant partisan microscope watching everything she did. When the dust cleared, the State BOE backed her up, and so did the courts.
Let it go, Mr. Knapp.