CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Starting Wednesday, your voting may be early but it may not be straight.
Voters in West Virginia are no longer able to check one box to vote party-line down the ballot. Voters now will need to mark the party of their choice for every candidate if they want one party down the line.
That will produce an interesting dynamic in West Virginia, where Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is expected to win the state by a wide margin.
Early voting begins Wednesday and continues to Nov. 5. Election Day is Nov. 8.
Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Bill Cole and state Treasurer candidate Ann Urling have tied their advertising to Trump’s popularity, but they can’t be guaranteed voters won’t zig-zag their way down the ballot.
“You’ve always got that worry because there are a lot of voters who look at the top of the ticket and don’t get that far down,” said Matthew Chapman, the Republican Party chairman in Ohio County, where 12,574 voters are registered as Democrats and 9,528 as Republicans.
“We’ve got great candidates from top to bottom. Just spectacular people who are overqualified, who are committed to making the state better.”
State legislators eliminated straight ticket voting in the 2015 legislative session.
Voters cast more than 126,400 straight-ticket ballots in the 2014 general election. That was of 462,900 total votes, so straight tickets counted for about a quarter of all votes.
That year, 53 percent of straight-ticket ballots were Republican and 42 percent went for Democrats.
Straight ticket voting has been a long tradition in West Virginia politics, said Robert Rupp, a political science professor at West Virginia Wesleyan.
“The phrase that was commonly used was to ‘scratch the rooster’ — because the rooster was up on top as a symbol of the Democratic Party. This has been going on for decades.”
Only 10 states in the entire country still have straight-ticket voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. West Virginia is the most recent state to eliminate the practice.
“The irony is that a Republican reform Legislature got rid of this,” Rupp said. “So Republican reform got rid of that kind of antiquated way of voting, and it could hurt their chances in this election.”
Chapman, the Ohio County GOP chairman, says Cole deserves credit for doing away with straight-ticket voting when he was state Senate president — even though he might have benefited from the practice as a gubernatorial candidate.
“He did away with it,” Chapman said. “To me that’s the most overlooked part. This guy literally went into office and made really tough decisions that are good for the state.”
Chapman believes many West Virginia voters went into the ballot box and marked straight-ticket without being well-informed about down-ballot races. He cited his grandparents, diehard Democrats, as an example.
“It really does a disservice to not know who you’re voting for,” Chapman said. “That’s why getting rid of straight ticket was a good thing. It was the right thing to do.”
Democratic Party representatives are in an interesting position also. Because Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is unpopular in West Virginia because of her widely-publicized comments about coal jobs, Democrats have to work harder to get voters to examine their down-ballot candidates.
“We have a lot of good candidates who are on the Democratic ticket,” said Bob Bailey, chairman of the Democratic Party in Cabell County, where 26,511 voters are registered Democrats and 18,809 as Republicans. “Very qualified. I think that’s what the citizens are looking for.”
Bailey said he would prefer for straight-ticket voting to remain an option.
“As a Democrat, I think straight ticket voting is good, especially for senior citizens,” Bailey said. “I think this new legislation was passed by Republicans to give them a chance to get some of the Democrats to vote for them.”
Democrats still outnumber Republicans in West Virginia, even though the state now reliably votes Republican in presidential elections.
There are 569,806 registered Democrats in West Virginia, according to the Secretary of State’s office. There are 385,297 Republicans. And then 261,335 are listed with no party at all.
In Ripley, members of the Jackson County Democratic Women said they’re having no trouble generating interest in local candidates — but very few people seem to want a Hillary Clinton sign.
“We hope it doesn’t hurt our local candidates,” said Lucille Cox, president of the Democratic women.
Democratic candidate Brian Prim, who faces a tough state Senate election fight against Republican Mitch Carmichael, said he is glad straight ticket voting is gone.
“I was against straight-ticket voting,” said Prim, who is campaigning in a district that includes Putnam, Jackson, Mason and Roane counties. “If you don’t know any of the candidates or what they’re voting for, I don’t know how you can vote for them.”