CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s municipal elections will be underway across the state for the next couple of weeks.
Sixteen elections will be held Tuesday with another 87 of them to follow next Tuesday, June 13. An additional 11 other elections will be taking place throughout the state on various dates.
Secretary of State Warner said that while municipal elections are not nearly as large as state and congressional elections, they are just as crucial, if not more so, because they directly deal with who sits on local city councils and implements local legislation.
“These are the type of elections that are probably most important to people, because they dealing with your local issues, that could be anything from trash pick-up or utilities, or that sort of thing,” Warner said during an appearance Monday on WCHS Radio’s 580-LIVE.
He said it’s all hands on deck for his office during municipal elections, with 10 investigators and the rest of the team being sent out to precincts across all of the districts to ensure the process is running smoothly and efficiently. Along with that, the office helps train poll workers and volunteers prior to the election.
“Running a municipal election is very similar to running any of the other elections, the administration, the paperwork, the administration is just as busy there than it is with any of the larger elections,” Warner said.
Warner said a major issue that municipal elections often are subject to is less voter turnout, and he said it’s one that has gotten even more complicated in the recent past redistricting as a result of the census, as municipalities had to determine where to redraw the boundary lines.
However, Warner said there has also been a recent effort from the legislature to allow municipalities to align their elections with the larger elections to have a larger turnout, but he said this comes with its own set of complications.
“Imagine you might have a ward inside of a city where you’re allowed to vote in that city’s election, but a precinct for a county election may go across that ward boundary into the county at large, so those lines would have to be aligned to make it run properly,” he said.
Another issue often seen in municipal elections is close election results, Warner said. He said because there is significantly lower voter turnouts in these elections, constituents votes count proportionately more.
He said this sometimes leads to some votes changing the structure of local city councils, as what was the case in Harpers Ferry a couple of years ago.
“Four votes were at issue whether they should be counted or not, at first they were not and that leaned the city council in one direction, once the Supreme Court weighed in and said they would be counted then that changed the outcome of a race or two, it changed the dynamics on city council,” Warner said.
He said there has been a number of other similar scenarios where the races for city council were decided on coin flips and drawing straws because those races had been tied.
Election misconduct and fraud were also once longstanding issues in West Virginia but Warner said his office has really worked hard to clean that up, and the state is now being singled out among others for its election integrity and security measures.
“Since I’ve been in office we’ve had 8 convictions for fraudulent activities, we’ve had a number of pre-trial diversions and 10 referrals to prosecuting attorneys, so you see it’s not something that’s widespread but it does happen,” he said.
Warner encourages anyone who sees election misconduct to utilize the “See Something, Text Something” service by texting “WV” to 45995, call the fraud hotline at 866 Fraud WV, or report it to your local county courthouse.