An election chief says the 'big lie' ended her career. She's fighting back.

An election chief says the ‘big lie’ ended her career. She’s fighting back.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/11/02/lynchburg-elections-registrar-lawsuit/

Christine Gibbons was harassed, investigated and dropped as registrar after she was targeted by false election claims. Her career and, some say, fair elections in one Virginia city hang on the outcome of her legal battle.

By Justin Jouvenal
November 2, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Christine Gibbons in front of her former workplace, the Voter Registration and Elections Office in downtown Lynchburg, Va. (Justin Ide for The Washington Post)

LYNCHBURG, Va. — It was Election Day in 2020 and there was much to do, so the voting registrar headed out her door at 4 a.m. She was wheeling her car out of the driveway when she caught sight of something that stopped her cold. … “Christine Gibbons Belongs in Jail,” read a sign hung on a bush in front of her home. “#LOCKHERUP.”

Gibbons had warily watched the rise in threats, harassment and allegations of fraud hurled at election workers nationwide, but now the storm had arrived in her city in central Virginia. Stunned, she quickly rolled up the banner to keep her teenage children from seeing it and set off in the dark to open the polls.

It was a harbinger. Over the next three years, Gibbons was accused of corruption, taken to court and reported to police for supposedly siphoning votes to Joe Biden. A Republican who called for Gibbons’s firing and attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, was appointed as one of her bosses on the local election board.

It all came to a head in May when the Republican-controlled board decided not to reappoint her. Gibbons said she believes that the rejection was motivated by false election claims, an accusation the Republican board members deny. They say that her communication skills and ability to train workers were lacking and that she had made mistakes on the job.

Election workers have left the field in droves in recent years in the face of hostility. In a nearby Virginia county, an entire election office resigned. But Gibbons, like an increasing number, is fighting back. She filed suit, part of a wave of recent lawsuits by election workers who say they feel compelled to battle false allegations inspired by Donald Trump’s “big lie.”

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