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UPDATE: Elections director Rob Coffman weighs options after state director decides to fire him
Wesley Young/Winston-Salem Journal | Posted: Saturday, January 18, 2014 1:12 pm
The director of the N.C. Board of Elections has fired Forsyth County Elections Director Rob Coffman because of errors Coffman made in the recounting of votes for a seat on the Tobaccoville Village Council last November.
In a nine-page letter dated Jan. 17 and sent to members of the Forsyth County Board of Elections, Kim Strach, the executive director of the state elections board, said that Coffman showed “an apparent disregard for ensuring an accurate result” in the Tobaccoville contest.
Strach wrote that Coffman failed to provide “complete and truthful” responses to the state when it conducted an inquiry, and that Coffman’s conduct was “unacceptable for a person in this position of public trust.”
“Based on these actions, I am not confident that Director Coffman can fulfill his obligation to the voters of Forsyth County to provide fair and accurate elections,” Strach wrote in the conclusion of her detailed letter. “Therefore, with the deepest regret, I have no other option but to terminate Robert Coffman as the director of the Forsyth County Board of Elections.”
Coffman said Saturday afternoon that he didn’t want to comment until he has had a chance to look at his options.
“I believe there is an appeals process from the director’s decision to the state board, and I need to look more into that process,” Coffman said. “I need to hold off on comments until I have a chance to discuss this with others. I was disappointed in the decision. I also have respect for the executive director of the state board.”
Ken Raymond, the chairman of the county elections board, said Saturday that Strach’s decision is final and that the county would start looking for an interim election director to put in place while the search goes forward for Coffman’s replacement.
“I believe that director Strach weighed the facts in our petition, along with the information she discovered in her own investigation, very carefully,” Raymond said. “She also outlined how she reached her conclusions very clearly. And any reasonable person would conclude that her judgment is fair.”
According to state law, the state board of elections can defer the decision of the state elections director for 20 days so that a county director can present information and witnesses to the state board.
In December, the county elections board had petitioned the state to fire Coffman on two other allegations as well as the Tobaccoville issue: that Coffman had shown disrespect to Raymond and to the Civitas Institute, a conservative advocacy group; and that Coffman had mishandled an issue that cropped up over the handling of voter registration cards at Winston-Salem State University.
In her letter, Strach said neither of those other two allegations furnished a reason to fire Coffman.
Coffman was reprimanded last October for making sarcastic remarks to Raymond in a meeting and in a telephone message, and for telling Raymond that the Civitas group was “worse than the Tea Party.” Strach wrote that although Coffman, in responding to the allegation, had tried to “sugar coat” his side of the story, the fact that Coffman had made no more sarcastic or disrespectful remarks since his October reprimand had basically laid the matter to rest.
As for the tangled issue of what happened to some undeliverable voter registration cards at WSSU – in part, Raymond and Coffman disagreed over the number of cards involved – Strach wrote that she found no evidence that anyone had tampered with the cards or deliberately did anything wrong.
The Tobaccoville council vote count allegations were more serious, Strach indicated, saying that she found them “extremely troubling.”
In the Tobaccoville contest, Steve Wood won a seat on the village council when he won a blind draw after a recount showed the contest tied. But a second recount gave the seat to incumbent Lori Shore-Smith by one vote, as Coffman acknowledged errors that should have been caught earlier.
In her letter, Strach said that Coffman mishandled recount procedures despite having “all of the information that he needed to know if there was a discrepancy in the recounting.”
Strach said that Coffman told her that “he really did not give this recount the attention he should have because it was a small election, and he really did not think it was going to be a big deal.”
JoAnne Allen, one of Coffman’s most persistent critics, called the state decision “a really great day for Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.”
“The only way we can have fair elections with people of ethics and integrity is to expose those individuals who are breaking the law,” Allen said, maintaining that Coffman’s firing is but one step among many that should be taken, including criminal prosecutions.
Allen is among some of Coffman’s critics who believe that some local elected officials have benefitted from election-law shenanigans, allegations that have never gained any traction. But Allen said she would still press for Coffman’s indictment, “along with anyone else who falls in that same category.”
Fleming El-Amin, the sole Democrat on the thee-member county elections board, did not support that board’s effort to fire Coffman and said he was disappointed with the state decision.
“I would have preferred that she had put him on leave,” El-Amin said. “I agree there was administrative error, but that does not warrant termination, it warrants suspension.”
The political composition of both the state and local elections board changed when Republican Pat McCrory won the governor’s office in 2012. Under state law, elections boards always have a majority composed of people who are in the same party as the governor.
El-Amin sees political maneuvers behind the state decision because Strach “used information from the local Republican chairman to support the decision to terminate him.”
wyoung@wsjournal.com
(336)727-7369
Meghann Evans contributed to this story. |
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