A state-appointed North Carolina elections official resigned from his post on Thursday, officials said, after he was arrested and accused of spiking his granddaughters’ ice cream with illicit narcotics.
James Edwin Yokeley Jr., 66, had been chairman of the Surry County Board of Elections before he submitted his letter of resignation.
“This decision has not been made lightly,” Yokeley wrote to the board. “After much prayer, thoughtful reflection and consultation, I have concluded that it’s in the best interest of the State Board of Elections, regarding my own falsely accused circumstances, to step down at this time.”
Yokeley had stopped at a Sheetz gas station on Aug. 8 and flagged down a passing police officer to report that “his two juvenile granddaughters had found two hard objects in the ice cream they had recently purchased at the Dairy Queen” about 4 miles away, according to a Wilmington police statement.
The girls didn’t consume the pills which were later tested and found to be “illegal narcotics,” police said.
Video footage taken from that Dairy Queen showed that it was Yokeley who “had been the one who placed the two pills into both victims’ ice cream,” police said.
Yokeley was booked on suspicion of contaminating food with a controlled substance and felony child abuse, police said.
Messages left at publicly listed phone numbers of the suspect, his family and workplace were not immediately returned on Thursday.
In his letter resigning from the elections board, Yokeley said: “Based on the truth and facts, I remain prayerfully confident that I will be exonerated of all accusations leveled against me.”
Yokeley was appointed to the Surry County elections board by State Auditor Dave Boliek in June of last year. Boliek could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday.
Yokeley had previously run for a seat on the Surry County Board of Education. He was a relatively competitive third-place finisher in the 2022 Republican primary for the District 4 race, finishing with 26.69% of the vote.
Throughout that local campaign, Yokeley focused on his grievances with national Covid policies and whether votes in 2020 federal elections were properly counted, according to race winner T.J. Bledsoe.
“I disagreed with some ways that things were handled with masks and those types of things (during the pandemic) but it was over by then. We had moved forward,” Bledsoe told NBC News on Thursday. “I think we were all confused (by Yokeley’s Covid and voting focus in a local race).”
After falling short in that race, Yokeley continued to use that campaign’s social media to advocate for anti-vaccine stances.
He cited the Children’s Health Defense, the non-profit of anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Nov. 21, 2022 saying a “wave of justice is swelling against employers” mandating vaccination against Covid.
In a Dec. 7. 2022 posting, Yokeley said “big pharma” and the federal government were lying about Covid vaccines that he claims — with no evidence — have “caused more adverse effects and deaths than all previous vaccines combined.”
Studies have overwhelmingly demonstrated that Covid vaccines are safe and effective, and that most side effects are mild or moderate.
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