Nobody can do an election like Rob Coffman

Not the first time there have been calls to fire Forsyth County Elections Director Rob Coffman, so in light of yet another –perhaps the strongest — effort to fire Coffman, previous Board of Elections members who stuck by him are on the defensive:

Jerry Jordan and Frank Dickerson – who were on the Forsyth County Board of Elections in early 2011 – defended their investigation and assessment of Coffman. The other board member, Linda Sutton, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Jordan and Dickerson said they are not privy to the specifics of the new board’s allegations against Coffman, but they said they saw Coffman as a director who knows how to run an election.

“Nobody can do an election like him,” said Jordan, who was the lone Republican on the board in 2011.

The latest effort to fire Coffman not only revolves around his boorish behavior but his department’s sloppy handling of voter mailings to Winston-Salem State University. As the Winston-Salem Journal points out, this not the first time in recent months the elections board has discussed WSSU. Back in July board member Ken Raymond “indicated a desire” to close down WSSU’s early voting site:

Rodtece Parker, a junior at WSSU, said he has talked to a lot of students who feel that the suggested closing of the Anderson Center could be a racial issue.

“Whatever happens, we’re still going to find a way to vote,” Parker said.

Dominique Mickel, a sophomore, said she found it “mind boggling” and “offensive” that WSSU was the only college whose forms Raymond proposed to deny.

Raymond graduated from Winston-Salem State in 1987. He said in an email that the board was not trying to unfairly target WSSU and that it had not been made aware of any voting problems at other schools.

“No one could stop us from voting during the ’80s,” Raymond said in an email Wednesday night. “But students today are being misled to believe that being asked to show an ID will stop them from voting. Or, if they can’t vote on campus, they can’t vote at all. None of that is true. And it’s extremely irresponsible for the people shouting ‘voter suppression’ to place these false ideas in the minds of students.”

Interesting perspective on voter ID from a fellow African American and WSSU alumnus. I wonder what insight Ken Raymond has that those young students don’t?