In a red NC county, a Republican leader claims voter fraud, allegedly threatens election official

North Carolina election officials say the chairman of the Surry County Republican Party threatened the county election director, demanded access to voting equipment and told people not to let a machine count their votes—advice that could lead to their votes being thrown out.

Party chairman Keith Senter is one of several people said to be pushing unsubstantiated claims of election fraud from the 2020 election in the county, where former President Donald Trump won 75% of the vote and every Surry County Republican in a state or federal race got at least 69% of the vote.

The confrontations have state election officials concerned for the safety of Surry County elections staff, and they illustrate the persistence of conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 elections, both in North Carolina and across the country.

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Tensions escalated during a March 28 meeting between county election officials, Senter and others. Since then election officials have occasionally asked police from the county seat of Dobson to be in the parking lot as election workers head home for the evening, Dobson Police Chief Shawn Myers said.

Senter helped bring a nationally known conspiracy theorist to the county in late March to speak to local Republicans, and to meet with Surry County elections director Michella Huff, who said she spoke to them for 75 minutes.

“They came to tell me that there was lots of voter fraud in Surry County, and they were doing me a favor,” Huff said. “They wanted to show me where I could remove people who were fraudulent voters.”

Huff said she gave Senter and Douglas Frank, a teacher from Ohio who travels the country repeating debunked election fraud claims, challenge forms to identify fraudulent voters. The pair has “yet to turn in one name to me,” Huff said this week. A North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesman said the pair hasn’t brought forward any other credible evidence of irregularities either.

Huff also said Senter is telling people that the county’s DS200 ballot tabulators, used at polling sites in Surry County and around the state to count paper ballots, switch people’s votes, that they aren’t secure, and that they’re connected to the internet.

“All three of those statements are not correct,” Huff said.

Senter didn’t return phone messages seeking comment. No one from the Surry County Republican Party responded to an email seeking an interview, and the North Carolina Republican Party declined comment through a spokesman. Most GOP lawmakers who represent Surry County in the General Assembly––state Reps. Kyle Hall and Sarah Stevens and Sen. Deanna Ballard—didn’t return messages seeking comment.

Senate Republican leader Phil Berger, who represents an eastern slice of the county, said through a spokeswoman that he “has not spoken with Mr. Senter and learned of his actions through media reports.” He declined further comment.

Senter returned to Huff’s office after their initial meeting, according to the state elections board, demanding various records. State elections board spokesman Pat Gannon said Huff memorialized these conversations in a memo, but Gannon declined to release that memo, saying it’s “criminal intelligence information,” which is protected from release under the state open records act. The state elections board isn't currently conducting a formal investigation, Gannon said.

"We continue to monitor the situation closely and will report any further incidents to our law enforcement partners," he said.

No law enforcement agency has opened an investigation into the matter, Gannon said.

“Mr. Senter’s tone in both of those meetings has been described by Director Huff and multiple witnesses as ‘aggressive, threatening and hostile,’” Gannon said in an email. Gannon also said that Huff has been “repeatedly been told by Mr. Senter that she would lose her job or have her pay reduced if she did not comply with the demands.”

Gannon told Reuters, in answers to questions that he later forwarded WRAL News, that the Dobson Police Department and the Surry County sheriff were contacted “as this issue has progressed.”

Myers, the Dobson police chief, said one of his officers was called to the local board office March 28 and spoke with Huff. Senter had already left, Myers said, and there was no evidence of a personal threat, though Huff told the officer that Senter had threatened to have her fired.

No formal report was taken, but Myers said the department offered to send a car to the board parking lot as employees leave, and that Huff has requested escorts about a half dozen times since the meeting.

Huff told WRAL News that Senter never physically threatened her, but that he said “over and over” he would sue her, that she would lose her job and that other local officials were on his side.

“I guess the best word to describe it is just very uncomfortable,” she said.

Gannon said Huff and her staff are “doing a commendable job of conducting elections in Surry County, under increasingly hostile circumstances.”

“Thankfully, we are not aware of any similar situations in North Carolina,” Gannon said in a statement.

During the March 28 meeting with Huff, Senter made a similar argument, according to Gannon.

“Mr. Senter and Dr. Frank claimed that there was a ‘chip’ in the voting machines that pinged a cellular phone tower on November 3, 2020, and somehow influenced election results,” Gannon said in a statement. “This is fabricated disinformation, and there is no evidence that this occurred anywhere in North Carolina.”

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Senter and others claim these voting machines connect to the internet. But connecting voting machines to the internet is against the law in North Carolina.

Gannon said the tabulators “are never connected to the internet, nor can they be.” They are routinely tested, and sample precincts in every county get an additional hand count each election to ensure the accuracy of machine counts, he said.

Frank has made similar claims in other states, including through testimony last month to a legislative committee in Kansas. That testimony led that state’s Republican secretary of state, Scott Schwab, to issue a letter refuting Frank’s claims.

“These claims, without evidence, are based on supposition, conjecture, and misrepresentation of our state’s election data to apply theories regarding election activities in other states to Kansas,” Schwab wrote. “This rhetoric has become destructive toward Kansas and the foundation of our republic. It has put our county election officers and volunteer poll workers in harm’s way and encouraged mistrust in our elections.”

Gannon said two members of the N.C. Audit Force participated in the March 28 meeting. That group didn’t respond to an emailed interview request, but in its April email newsletter, which was forwarded to WRAL News, the N.C. Audit Force announced it was “no longer working with the efforts being made in Surry County.”

“There was some disagreement with the importance of the protocol to vet and background check all volunteer canvassers,” the newsletter said.

Huff said that Senter is telling Surry County voters not to put their ballots into tabulators this election season and to demand a hand count instead. That is not an option in North Carolina, and Gannon said any ballots that a voter won’t deposit themselves will be put in a box by election staff to be counted later by machine.

Voters who refuse that would not have their vote counted at all. It’s also a misdemeanor to take a ballot from the polling place.

“[That’s] the unfortunate thing,” Huff said. “They have voted. They cannot reenter and vote.”