Letters to the Editor for Friday, November 13, 2009

Falwell Jr.: Voter intimidation was real
In response to the Nov. 9 letter from two prominent local Democrats, Joan and Bob MacCallum, in The News & Advance, I want to set the record straight about the remarks I made about Liberty University’s concerns about intimidation at the polls.

These concerns were not fabricated to energize students to vote. Liberty University officials were advised prior to the election that some local citizens planned to intimidate LU student voters by requiring them to sign change of address affidavits and by telling students that they could not vote if they had moved since the last election. As it turned out, at least one student did, in fact, encounter these tactics.

I received an e-mail from LU student, Chelsea Davis, advising me that she went to Heritage Elementary to change her address and vote. She presented her voter registration card with her Liberty University dorm address from the previous year. She was told that she could change her address to her new residence in Lynchburg but would not be allowed to vote. The tactic worked and she left but then encountered another student who had heard me caution students in convocation that, if their address had changed, they might be told that they could not vote this year. The law, however, does allow citizens to vote at the precinct where they voted in a previous election in the first election following their change of address.

Davis, after learning the truth, returned to Heritage Elementary and voted. Her e-mail to me was a “thank you” — she had been genuinely excited about exercising her right to vote and was nearly denied that right. We do not know how many other students were improperly denied the right to vote because their address had changed but her experience is proof that our concerns about intimidation prior to the election were not unfounded.

I was proud of the more than 2,000 students who turned out to vote citywide last Tuesday. They did not all vote the same way, but how or for whom they voted was never the point. These students are learning a valuable lesson about democracy and how a single vote can make a great impact. I hope that they will carry that lesson with them long after they have left Liberty University.
JERRY FALWELL Jr.
Chancellor, Liberty University

The Garrett victory
Who are the biggest losers in Del. Shannon Valentine’s defeat? It is the people of Lynchburg.

We had a hard-working, non-partisan advocate, endorsed by many business organizations, The News & Advance and others, a woman of great integrity, a person who conducted our business in an above-board and transparent manner.

And what do we have now? A man who resorted to lying to get elected. He repeated his lies about how Del. Valentine was going to raise our taxes so many times that people believed him and were afraid. Even in the face of explanations and facts, he continued to promulgate the same lies without blinking an eye.

Has Scott Garrett been above-board and honest in his dealings with us as a member of City Council? Certainly not when he and two others, behind the backs of two absent council members, took a longtime educator off the School Board and replaced him with Darin Gerdes, an LU fundamentalist.

Now why would he do that? Could he have been looking ahead to his run for the House of Delegates and wanted to curry favor with Jerry Falwell Jr., who was planning to take over City Council, the School Board and the Planning Commission?

Well, his deviousness worked; he won. But look what the residents of Lynchburg lost: a person of outstanding character who worked for the city rather than for a party or herself. In her place, we elected someone who showed us that he would do whatever it took to further his own political ambitions. That is not someone of whom we can be proud or whom we can trust. That is not someone whom we can count on to work for us rather than for himself or for his political party or for Jerry Falwell, for that matter.
BETSY GRZYBOWSKI
Lynchburg