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Following the resignation of the county’s Voter Registrar, Eric Goode, on Dec. 3, the Charlotte County electoral board voted on Wednesday, Dec. 22, to temporarily relocate the Registrar’s office.

The temporary office is located at 117 LeGrande Ave. Charlotte Court House.

Electoral Board member Glenn Baker said the decision to relocate the office was made because of a filed complaint and motion to impanel a special grand jury.

“This is creating problems finding fill-in people willing to enter the premises and manage the daily operations of the office,” Baker said.

According to Baker, the office is currently being managed by a Halifax County Voter Registrar Heather Harding.

“The Board is seeking a Registrar to fill the vacant position,” Baker said. “The goal is to have a new Registrar in place by the end of January.”

Issues with the former Registrar have been ongoing since last year when electoral board member and secretary Dean Foster alleged Goode mismanaged the county registrar’s office, violated election laws and falsified his timesheets.

Goode, who has served as Registrar since the fall of 2020 following the retirement of Nan Lambert, took out a protective order against Foster on Nov. 8 after he said Foster followed him when he left his office on several occasions.

Following a show-cause court case between him and Foster, Goode resigned.

In his letter of resignation, Goode wrote that he was being forced out of a job and denied any wrongdoing while serving as voter registrar.

In addition, Goode asked that no legal action be brought against him.

“No legal action will be brought on against me as I have indicated as I am being forced to re-sign against my wishes. I do not admit to any wrongdoing by signing this statement. I sign this statement as I wish to go on with my life and my ability to live.”

According to Foster, his attorney John Jansen requested Goode to resign.

Concerns of spending in the Registrar’s office have also been brought up by the Board of Supervisors (BOS).

In an unprecedented move, the BOS unanimously voted to inappropriate over $15,000 in funds from the Registrar’s FY21/22 budget, citing concerns of overspending by the office.

Just a week after Goode’s resignation, five citizens from the Randolph and Saxe area filed a lawsuit naming Goode, the Board of Supervisors, and the Virginia Department of Elections as defendants.

The five citizens named in the complaint seeking a special grand jury are listed on court documents as George Toombs, Borys Dzyndra, Jeremiah DeMuth, Jane Winterson and Hugh Adams.

According to the 16-page court document, the No. 1 complaint made is that “there are known irregularities in the election that have led to Electoral Board Member Dean Foster withdrawing his certification of the 2021 election due to missing ballots and discrepancies in the absentee ballot counts and the accounting of those ballots.”

According to the suit, allegedly, when Goode was initially confronted with these absentee ballot problems, he gave the Chair of the Democrat Party what appeared to be false reports.

According to documents on Nov. 12, a judge ordered Goode to produce the absentee ballot information.

In addition, the suit claims that Goode made several trips to see the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors after being questioned about missing ballots. However, after an investigation, The Virginia Department of Elections deemed that complaint to be unfounded.