Election official resigns after surveillance camera catches him and his wife defacing Trump yard signs

An elections official in South Carolina resigned from his position after being accused of vandalizing Trump campaign signs.

Dean Smith, chairman of the Georgetown County Board of Voter Registration and Elections, resigned this week after Republican Party officials filed a complaint with police that he and his wife defaced a Trump/Pence yard sign, according to the Charlotte Observer.

“We regret this lapse of judgment on our part. I do not want to be a distraction to the conduct of this very important election,” Smith said.

A local resident of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, noticed that his signs supporting President Trump’s reelection campaign kept disappearing from his yard and a deer camera showed an individual removing one sign and defacing another by writing “dump” over the word Trump.

That resident complained to local GOP officials who eventually received a tip that Smith and his wife were the culprits.

Smith’s wife Rita admitted to defacing the sign but claimed she was doing her job as the neighborhood homeowners association president by removing political signs that were a violation of HOA rules.

Rita Smith said a Trump sign appeared on common property after she had been involved in a political disagreement with a nearby resident over a Trump flag that the resident refused to take down.

“Our emotions got the better of us,” Rita Smith said, and her husband added they removed the signs “because we were angry with the other resident.”

“This is actually an HOA issue,” Dean Smith said in a statement. “We have regulations against the signs. The people that reported this, put a sign on someone else’s property without their knowledge, and they insulted and attacked my wife who is the HOA president and asked them to get rid of the signs. The camera that took our picture was also put on someone else’s property.”

*story by The Washington Examiner