Derwin Montgomery responds

First, a correction: Winston-Salem City Councilman Derwin Montgomery was 21 years old at the time of his 2009 run for council, not 19. I thought I knew his age from memory, but I should have checked the record, especially considering that we published his age at the time.

Second, I would like to apologize to Montgomery. I received a cell phone message from Montgomery last Friday. For some reason, I didn’t notice the message until today. I would have much preferred to have had Montgomery’s input before the publication of my story about alleged election law violations, fraud and other improprieties in Forsyth County elections. It would have made for a better story and it would have been fairer to Montgomery. Because I didn’t realize that he had tried to reach me, I wrote that Montgomery did not return calls for this story.

Montgomery told me he has a number of concerns about the story.

The councilman disputes the possibility raised in the story through the statements of former elections employees and voter registration records by stating in response that there was no deliberate intent to allow or encourage students who lived off campus and outside of his ward to vote in his race. He echoed a published statement by his political advisor, Larry Little, saying that the notion is illogical, considering the large number of students who live on campus and were thus eligible to vote for him.

“There was even encouragement for those who didn’t live in the East Ward to become educated about the other races, so they could vote,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery said he does not recall an incident alleged by former employees Terry Cox and PJ Lofland in which Cox reportedly told a voter accompanied by Montgomery that if she lied about her residency she would be breaking the law.

“I think I would remember that quite vividly,” Montgomery said. “We took students down to vote and walked them through the process of how to fill out a voter registration card. It was learned in the 2008 election process that they kicked out a whole of lot of registrations. The biggest thing we were trying to do was to fill out those registration cards correctly. Any assistance that was offered was to make sure that paperwork was filled out correctly.”

Montgomery suggested he may take legal action against the former employees.

“The accusation of there being an intent to commit fraud is very troubling to me,” he said. “Those who work at the board of elections to make any allegation after this was already looked into, in my mind, shows actual malice and reckless disregard for the truth. That’s an issue that may be taken up with the actual individuals and the board of elections…. When accusations are made with no substance by people who are in a position to verify or check is something that is disheartening."

Montgomery also said he objects to questions about the conduct of the 2009 election being reported in relation to allegations having to do with Elections Director Rob Coffman’s management of the office.

“I think intertwining those issues convolutes the issue,” Montgomery said. “I think they’re separate issues…. In his case, they’re quite serious and they should be dealt with separately.”