NC Republican election board member spiked grandkids' ice cream
Strange news from North Carolina... Back on the beat of local election deniers... A reminder of how important this work is...
James “Jimmy” Yokeley has resigned from his position as chair of the Surry County Board of Election in North Carolina after police say he spiked his grandchildrens’ ice cream with cocaine and ecstasy.
Weird sentence to write but here we are. Anyway, this is a strange story and Yokeley is denying the allegations — although police say they have him on video putting blue MDMA pills into his grandchildrens’ Dairy Queen Blizzards. God, these sentences just keep getting weirder.
“After much prayer, thoughtful reflection and consultation, I have concluded that it’s in the best interest of the State Board of Elections and Surry County Board of Elections, regarding my own falsely accused circumstances, to step down at this time,” Yokeley wrote in his resignation letter.
Regular readers of American Doom know how local election boards like the one Yokeley chaired are not just the frontlines of Americans’ right to vote — but also fraught with growing controversy and right-wing extremism. Many, many unserious and unqualified people serve on county election boards.
My conversation with Stan Ferguson stands out as one such example. I spoke to Ferguson, who serves on the election board in Prairie County, Arkansas, last July. He’s a full-throated election denier who believes that “big cities” are hotbeds for voter fraud.
“I believe that they’re coming up with unsigned votes — not in Arkansas. Arkansas to me is completely legitimate,” Ferguson told me, adding that it’s the states and cities run by Democrats where rampant fraud occurs. “There’s these states that have these big cities with these big populations and they just overcome you. And when they do that, that makes your vote not count.”
Just this week, I began to compile new lists of the officials who serve on these boards so that I can vet them for evidence of election denialist beliefs. I didn’t have Yokeley on any of my lists from last year as being an obvious election denier, but that doesn’t mean much. With more than 3,000 counties across the country, there are thousands of officials who require vetting for their support for Donald Trump’s lies about voting and elections. American Doom is the only publication regularly engaged in this work — and it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort. I simply can’t get to each and every official, some of whom have little to no online presence that allows me to vet them for their beliefs in election lies.
But still, I continue to try. As the only reporter in the country who is regularly focused on this task, it can be a lonely one. The work, however, has netted important results. My reporting from last year exposed not just the phenomenon of hundreds of election deniers serving as local election officials, but how they could affect the outcomes of election by refusing to certify results. That danger remains, and so it’s at this time, more than a year from next year’s mid-term elections, that I’ve dug back into investigating these officials.
But I could use your help. If you want to support my investigation of local election official and the broader election denial movement, please choose a paid subscription to American Doom or consider dropping a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. Your dollars fund this important journalism.
Next week, I’ll have some news about recent denialist developments here in Georgia, as well as an initial checklist for progressive communities looking to fight back against Trump’s authoritarian regime.
Hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend. - jg
Hi, Yep the DQ story was right here in Wilmington. Thanks for reporting it and linking it to other election issues.
Sigh.