A county elections board member in western North Carolina resigned this week, shortly before she was slated to be removed from her post for making "salacious allegations" on Facebook that violated state law governing the conduct of election officials.
Cornelia Cree, a Republican member of the Haywood County Board of Elections, submitted her resignation late Tuesday at the urging of GOP party leaders. A vote to remove her from office was on the Wednesday agenda for the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, but the item was removed shortly before the meeting.
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In Cree's Facebook post, dated Sept. 18 but deleted Wednesday, she asserted that Democrats are seeking "the legalization of pedophilia" to protect the Catholic Church and that "Democrats push open borders because the largest group of illegals are Catholic which statistically vote Democrat."
In addition to being offensive to several groups of people, the post is also illegal under state law, which governs elections officials' public conduct. Law and rules forbid those officials from making statements about nominees, candidates or parties that could lead to the perception of political bias.
Cree declined WRAL News' request for comment on where she got her information and why she posted it on Facebook. But in her correspondence with the state board's general counsel following complaints about the post, she argued that it did not violate the law.
The North Carolina Republican Party, however, agreed that it did and informed the state board that it would not oppose her removal from office. In a letter to the state board, GOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse characterized the allegations as "rather salacious."
"[One] could read the entire post as a bigoted rant against members of the Roman Catholic Church and Hispanic/Latino immigrants," Woodhouse said in the memo from late September. "This in turn calls into question whether or not Ms. Cree is a person of 'good moral character.'"
Woodhouse told WRAL News that the party had urged her to resign to speed up the process of appointing another Republican member to the board to replace her before the upcoming election.