Multiple Black women stood up at last night's county board meeting and said they applied for the registrar job and got no response.

“It seems like equity, political rights and social inclusion are at risk here in Buckingham," said the local NAACP chair

virginiamercury.com
Buckingham Electoral Board fires Republican registrar after less than a month in the job - Virginia...
The Republican-appointed head of Buckingham’s election office was fired in dramatic fashion Tuesday for allegedly misrepresenting his job

Buckingham Electoral Board fires Republican registrar after less than a month in the job

Controversial election official terminated for allegedly misrepresenting job history

BY: GRAHAM MOOMAW - MAY 9, 2023 2:42 PM

DILLWYN – The Republican-appointed head of Buckingham County’s election office was fired in dramatic fashion Tuesday morning, one day after several residents showed up at a public meeting to say the turmoil and dysfunction surrounding the office were a growing embarrassment for their community.

Interim registrar Luis Gutierrez, a self-described proud Republican who was hired April 11 after the county’s entire election staff quit, tried to preempt the news of his own firing by being the first to leave a closed session and speak to a crowd gathered in a local community center for an emergency meeting of the Buckingham Electoral Board. ... “You can all stand up and rejoice and start clapping and just go have a party,” Gutierrez said. “Because I have been terminated.”

Gutierrez said he had been asked to resign but refused to do so because that would be “admitting some sort of guilt.” He also said he apologized if he had disappointed or offended any Buckingham residents. ... Republican Electoral Board Chairwoman Karen Cerwinski, who oversaw the hiring and firing of Gutierrez, told him he was “out of order” and appeared to briefly confer with two law enforcement officers about getting them to intervene in the situation. Gutierrez eventually left of his own accord.

Cerwinski said Gutierrez was terminated for “falsification” of his job application, but the firing comes after numerous residents reported unusual encounters with the man recently hired to run voter registration and elections in the rural central Virginia community of almost 17,000 people.

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Under Virginia law, the party that most recently won the governor’s mansion gets an automatic majority on all 133 of Virginia’s local electoral boards, which hire and fire registrars and oversee the work of local election officials. Because Gov. Glenn Youngkin won in 2021, all electoral boards flipped to Republican majorities this year after a long stretch of Democratic control. That shift appeared to set off the feud in Buckingham that caused the entire election office to quit.

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GRAHAM MOOMAW
gmoomaw@virginiamercury.com
https://twitter.com/gmoomaw
A veteran Virginia politics reporter, Graham grew up in Hillsville and Lynchburg, graduating from James Madison University and earning a master's degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. Before joining the Mercury in 2019, he spent six years at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, most of that time covering the governor's office, the General Assembly and state politics. He also covered city hall and politics at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville.