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Justin Ide

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 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Joe Biden</a>. A Republican who called for Gibbons’s firing and attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Jan. 6</a>, 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 <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/poll-election-officials-shows-high-turnover-amid-safety-threats-and">have left the field in droves</a> in recent years in the face of hostility. In a nearby Virginia county, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/buckingham-county-virginia-election-staff-quits-baseless-voter-fraud-rcna76435">an entire election office resigned</a>. 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.”

Wisconsin’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/14/wisconsin-republicans-fire-election-director/">top election official</a> sued in September after Republican state senators tried to oust her. Two Atlanta election workers <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/30/giuliani-defamed-georgia-election-workers/">won a defamation case</a> against Rudy Giuliani in August after he falsely accused them of fraud during the 2020 election. And a top Arizona election official recently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/22/kari-lake-defamation-lawsuit-arizona/">sued former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake</a> over her spurious claims that cheating cost her the 2022 election.

Scott Olson

Legal experts say Gibbons’s suit, which contends that the election board violated her First Amendment right to free political association by removing her for purely partisan reasons, is among the first in the country to make that argument. The Supreme Court has held that it is illegal to fire most government workers over politics. Her attorney hopes it will be a test case, drawing a line in the sand that will help other election workers under partisan political fire.

Gibbons’s financial security — she is her family’s sole breadwinner — and career hang in the balance, but she, along with some local Democrats and Republicans, fears that something even bigger is at stake: free and fair elections in Lynchburg.

“I think it’s typical of what’s happening nationwide,” said Carolyn Sherayko, a former Democratic member of the Lynchburg election board who resigned in protest over Gibbons’s removal. “Officials handling elections are under attack.”

Gibbons became interested in election work after organizing registration drives for students while working as a director of community involvement for a local college. She applied for the registrar job and was unanimously selected by a bipartisan election board in 2018.

For the first few years, Gibbons was another low-profile bureaucrat in rural America.

She said she tried to avoid politics, keeping her party affiliation and who she voted for largely secret to avoid any appearance of bias. She had five years of positive job evaluations that were reviewed by The Washington Post.

As Trump pushed false claims of voter fraud in the run-up to the 2020 election, Gibbons said, tensions ratcheted higher in Lynchburg, which has historically been a red bastion and is home to the conservative and politically influential Liberty University, founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.

Local Republicans began sending representatives to monitor the election office’s work. Testy encounters flared. A local Republican election official, Betty Gibbs, accused the registrar’s office of corruption, without citing evidence, on social media. A visit to the office by a staffer for a politician devolved into shouting.

Five days before the election, the chair of the Lynchburg City Republican Committee sued Gibbons, asking a judge to order her to comply with a law he claimed she was violating. State code requires election officers from both parties be present when counting absentee ballots.

Gibbons said the office had processed about 250 votes one day in October after the Republican representative said at the last minute that he could not attend. She admits it was a mistake.

It’s not unusual for ballot disputes to end up in court, but in the hothouse atmosphere around voting in 2020, Gibbons’s actions were swept up into broader, Trump-style attacks on the local election system.

“When the Electoral Board, Registrar, and Deputy Registrar are removed, things will change,” Gibbs wrote on Facebook after the suit was filed. “I’m glad City Council has been alerted. #DraintheLynchburgSwamp.”

Gibbs and the Republican committee directed interview requests to an attorney, who declined to comment.

Gibbons was in the final rush getting ready for the election when she was served with papers in the lawsuit. They landed like a gut punch.

Gibbons was comfortable immersed in voting issues behind the scenes. She could expound on the origins of the absentee ballot, which allowed Civil War soldiers to vote, and rattle off election code sections from memory — 709 and 24.2-115 — but the suit, combined with the public attacks on her work and character, was new and unnerving. She was a bureaucrat, not a politician.

“I just wanted to cry,” Gibbons said. “I was crushed.”

She scrambled to get an attorney, and a hearing was scheduled for the afternoon of Monday, Nov. 2, just hours before the polls were set to open on Nov. 3. The only other time Gibbons had been to court was for a traffic ticket, but she nervously took the stand in a Lynchburg courtroom and testified for 30 minutes.

The judge ultimately denied the Republican request and dismissed the suit. Relieved, Gibbons hurried back to the election office to make the last preparations before Election Day.

Christine Gibbons

Gibbons woke early the next morning, taking a long, hot shower and dressing in clothes she had laid out the night before — her Election Day ritual to gird for the long day ahead. But her routine was upended when she discovered the banner outside her home.

She said she jumped out of her car and scanned the early-morning gloom to make sure the person who left it was not still around. Worries shot through her mind: Did someone follow her home the night before? Would they be waiting when she arrived at the election office?

Gibbons pulled the sign down and called police as she drove to work. Her mind turned to her children at home, Michael and Audra, then 16 and 18, still asleep inside. She grew angry.

“I took this on as my job, but now it’s affecting, in a real sense, my family and the safety of my family,” she said.

Police officers met Gibbons at election headquarters and took a report from her, but the ensuing investigation was not able to determine who posted the sign. Before she turned her attention back to the polls, Gibbons texted her family about what happened. Her eldest daughter, Danielle, responded by asking her mother to quit her job. It wouldn’t be the last time.

“You don’t need this type of stress,” Gibbons said Danielle often told her.

In a town where many people keep their doors unlocked, Gibbons later installed security cameras on her home. But she was unwilling to leave her post as registrar.

She said she relished playing a role in America’s democracy, however small. She knew the names of hundreds of voters and enjoyed the fresh challenges that emerged with each election. To her, it was “exciting work with a purpose.”

Still shaken, Gibbons dove back into work on Election Day, tallying ballots. The result represented a seismic shift in Lynchburg politics. The city voted for Biden, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/lynchburg-goes-blue-for-president-for-the-first-time-since-harry-truman-in-1948/2020/11/08/4250d8da-1fa8-11eb-ba21-f2f001f0554b_story.html" target=_blank>the first time it had supported a Democratic candidate for president since 1948</a>.

Insurrection in D.C., upheaval in Lynchburg

A few months later, as protesters gathered in Washington for Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, another drama about alleged voter fraud was unfolding in Lynchburg. A detective from the Virginia State Police arrived at the election offices, located in an old train station, and told Gibbons she was under investigation.

Gibbons said the detective told her that an official in the local Republican Party had lodged a complaint about the the processing of absentee votes that was the subject of the GOP’s lawsuit and also claimed that Gibbons gave extra votes to Biden.

Gibbons said the accusation about giving Biden extra votes was baseless, but the visit from police put her on edge.

She said she hauled vote tallies for each precinct into a conference room and spent about 40 minutes poring over the results with the detective. A spokeswoman for the state police said the results of the investigation were turned over to a special prosecutor, who declined to seek charges.

After the state police investigator left, Gibbons said, a deputy registrar beckoned her to watch what was unfolding on TV. They stared in disbelief as a mob sacked the Capitol.

“Jan. 6 was just like a pit in your stomach,” Gibbons said. “You wonder what more can happen to our country.”

That night, Betty Gibbs, the local Republican election official, appeared on <a href="https://wset.com/news/local/lynchburg-residents-protesting-election-fraud" target="_blank">a TV news segment</a> about more than 100 Lynchburg residents who had traveled to Washington to attend Trump’s rally before the attack. Gibbs echoed Trump’s election lies.

“I hope that the number of us sends a message to elected officials that we are not going to sit back and watch this election being stolen,” Gibbs told the TV station.

Matt McClain

Nearly a year later, the Lynchburg Republican Committee nominated Gibbs to the election board, and she took her seat in early 2022, replacing a fellow Republican.

Under Virginia law, three-member election boards administer all aspects of elections, including the selection of a registrar, in each of the state’s 133 counties and cities. At the time, Lynchburg’s board was controlled by Democrats, but that would soon change.

One board member is drawn from the Republican Party, one from the Democratic Party, and the third is from the party of the most recently elected governor. The election of Republican Glenn Youngkin in 2021 meant boards were shifting to GOP control. While the selection of board members is political, state law requires that they act in a nonpartisan fashion.

Gibbs’s pick was opposed by Democrats as well as some Republicans in Lynchburg.

Gibbons’s lawsuit claims the Republican Party withdrew Gibbs from a nomination to the election board in 2019 because she had allegedly violated election procedures as a poll worker by twice closing electronic polling books that help election workers track voters during elections. Gibbs denies the allegations in a response her attorney filed to Gibbons’s lawsuit.

Gibbons’s lawsuit also alleges that Gibbs told a Republican who worked for the election office, Aimee Mayer, that she planned to delete from the absentee voter rolls anyone whose ballot was returned as undeliverable, in violation of the process set by state and federal law.

“When I’m in charge, I’ll make sure your list is a lot shorter,” Mayer, in an interview, recalled Gibbs telling her.

Mayer said she was alarmed and reported the comments to the election board.

Gibbs denied the allegations in her response to Gibbons’s lawsuit.

Stacy Link, another Republican election official, said Gibbs expressed other unorthodox ideas, such as locking voters out of the registrar’s office 45 days before an election.

“It didn’t really seem like she was trying to ensure the integrity of elections,” Mayer said.

In early 2023, Lynchburg Republicans selected Steve Troxel, a retired Liberty University professor who has put forward faulty theories about how Democrats rigged votes, to replace a Democrat on the election board, cementing Republican control. Troxel, who shares an attorney with Gibbs, declined to comment for this article through that attorney.

As one of the new board’s first actions in March, the Republican majority voted to open the registrar job and set the deputy registrar terms to end in June. Gibbons and her deputies would have to reapply for their jobs. Together, they had more than three decades of experience. Their loss would drain the most seasoned staff from the office.

Sherayko, the lone Democrat on the board, soon resigned in protest. She and David Neumeyer, the Democrat who replaced her, said in interviews that they thought the move was a blatant power play to install officials sympathetic to Republican allegations about election fraud. They said they thought the issues Republicans cited related to Gibbons’s performance were a pretext to remove her.

“That majority has been bent on dismissing Christine and installing a Republican since day one,” Neumeyer said.

In court filings in response to Gibbons’s lawsuit, the attorney for Gibbs and Troxel denied any political motivation for the registrar’s removal and said state law allows the board to replace the registrar at the end of his or her term every four years.

Troxel and Gibbs seriously considered Gibbons for the job but thought her performance was deficient, according to the filings. They said that Gibbons had communication issues with the board and the public and that her ability to train election workers was poor, and they cited the mistake she made while processing absentee ballots in 2020 as well as other errors. Gibbs also said Gibbons was unwilling to work with her. Gibbons said that was inaccurate.

The GOP members were more impressed with Dan Pense, a Republican who worked in technology but had never run an election, during job interviews for the registrar position, according to the filing. Pense ultimately got the job.

If the Republican members of the board had concerns about her work, Gibbons said, it was news to her. She said they never met with her to discuss any job performance issues and did not conduct her annual review in 2023 before deciding to replace her. The board soon replaced the deputy registrars as well.

“It was in my mind that I’m going to have to go to court,” Gibbons said.

Justin Jouvenal

Gibbons sued Gibbs and Troxel in federal court in June.

The suit claims that Gibbons’s removal was illegal because the Supreme Court has held that many public employees cannot be dismissed for solely partisan reasons, since it violates their First Amendment right to free speech and political association.

The opening paragraph of the lawsuit asserts that the board was intent on pressing Trump’s “big lie” and the “ancillary supposition that local election administrators who are not part of their Republican faction are not to be trusted.”

The lawsuit cites Gibbs’s alleged comments about wanting to remove Gibbons even before she was on the election board, her statements on Jan. 6, 2021, and her accusations of corruption in the registrar’s office among other evidence that her motivation was political.

Gibbons is seeking a preliminary injunction to be reinstalled as registrar, but a hearing has been delayed while an appeals court weighs the defendants’ motion to dismiss the suit. A lower-court judge <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/virginia/vawdce/6:2023cv00035/128832/54/" target=_blank>denied it</a>.

Gibbons’s case is not an outlier. Election offices across the nation have become battlegrounds in recent years. In Virginia, controversies over registrars have erupted in Buckingham, Pittsylvania and Nottoway counties.

A nationwide <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/poll-election-officials-shows-high-turnover-amid-safety-threats-and" target=_blank>survey</a> of election officials by the Brennan Center for Justice revealed that nearly a third of those polled had been harassed or threatened, and there had been a significant turnover of election officials since the 2020 election. A Reuters investigation found that authorities are charging few who have threatened election workers.

Meanwhile, the turmoil surrounding the Lynchburg elections office has left it depleted with just days to go until this year’s vote, according to court filings by Gibbons. The deputy registrars have been replaced with less-experienced staff members, and a filing in Gibbons’s lawsuit claims that many poll workers have refused to work the upcoming contest.

Pense, the new registrar, wrote in an affidavit filed by Gibbs and Troxel that his office is prepared for the election and expects to have enough poll workers. He declined an interview request.

Neumeyer and Sherayko said they are gravely concerned about the direction of the new board, particularly after Gibbs’s alleged comments about removing voters from the absentee rolls and her endorsement of election conspiracy theories.

On a recent crisp fall day, Gibbons and her former deputy registrars met at Lynchburg’s elections office. They had rarely been back since they were ousted.

They said they wanted to cast their early ballots together for the November election to signal their solidarity in Gibbons’s quest to regain her job, keep their spirits up and do their civic duty. They chatted briefly before filing into the office.

The road ahead for Gibbons is daunting — her suit could drag on for months or longer. Her family has some savings, but she has had to take on expensive health insurance since she lost her job. She has a daughter with a chronic illness, as well as her own health problems. Gibbons plans to work at a friend’s cookie shop during the holidays to help pay the bills.

But she has no plans to give up her fight.

After feeding her ballot into an electronic voting machine, she fixed an “I voted” sticker on her dress and walked outside.

An earlier version of this article misstated the circumstances surrounding a lawsuit filed by Wisconsin’s top election official. Republicans had voted to remove the official from her role, but she and Wisconsin’s attorney general said they did not have the legal authority to do that and she remained on the job. She later sued to block any attempt to remove her. The article has been corrected.


Justin Jouvenal covers the Supreme Court. He previously covered policing and the courts locally and nationally. He joined The Post in 2009. 

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