Statehouse Beat: Lawmakers are scared of their constituents

Yet, the West Virginia Legislature is pursuing a flurry of voter suppression bills that would lead us to believe they’re deathly afraid that their safe margins could be snatched away at any moment. As of my Friday deadline, 88 elections bills have been introduced, the majority of which are aimed at making voter participation more difficult.

One of the bills advancing would make it a criminal offense, punishable by fines of up to $500 and/or up to six months in jail, to distribute absentee ballot applications to persons who had not specifically requested them (House Bill 2117).

We’re talking application forms, folks, not actual ballots. As Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, noted, if he goes to the Secretary of State’s website, prints out an absentee ballot application and gives it to a homebound neighbor, under this legislation he has committed a crime.

In effect, the majority wants to criminalize the innocent act of distributing applications on the chance it might result in folks who might not necessarily vote for the status quo participating in the election process.

There are bills that would repeal current law that makes a wide range of documents acceptable for voter identification and would instead not only require photo IDs, but would require the DMV to stamp “non-citizen� on driver’s licenses or IDs of non-naturalized immigrants. Never mind that non-citizens have never been able to vote.

Not only that, it would require voter registration cards also feature a photo ID, something that not only seems redundant, but would be costly for county clerk offices forced to produce the cards.

Mind you, this is not in response to widespread voter fraud, or even isolated instances of voter fraud, but is a way to impose hurdles to discourage would-be new voters from participating in elections.

Like many bills this session, another elections bill advancing is a response to a problem that doesn’t exist, banning ranked choice voting, which currently is not used anywhere in West Virginia (SB 490).

Designed to assure that the winning candidate in a multi-candidate election emerges with a plurality, ranked choice voting has many positives, including increased voter turnout and reduced negative campaigning, since candidates may need support from second- and third-choice voters who cast their first choice for other candidates.

It’s also designed to prevent scenarios like we saw last May, when Patrick Morrisey won the GOP gubernatorial primary with 33% of the vote, or a grand total of 6.8% of all registered voters in the state.

Since there was little chance in the current climate that the Democratic candidate for governor would win in November, the selection of our new governor effectively was made by just 75,000 West Virginians.

Indeed, a key selling point of ranked choice voting is that it makes it more difficult for extremist candidates to squeak out a win in a multi-candidate race.

Nationally, ranked choice voting is used primarily in municipal elections, and just the mere chance that someday, some West Virginia city might decide to give it a shot is enough to draw a preemptive ban.

Meanwhile, one of the more ironic election bills moving this session would require partisan election of judges — coming just 10 years after one of the first acts of the newly Republican-controlled Legislature was to make judicial elections nonpartisan.

At the time, then-Senate Judiciary chairman, now Supreme Court Justice Charlie Trump declared, “I contend that whether a person is a Republican or Democrat, or a Whig or a Libertarian, or whatever, tells us really nothing about whether that person possesses the qualities and characteristics that we seek and desire in those who hold judicial office in West Virginia.�

A decade later, the majority has evidently decided that the chance voters might elect a Democrat, Whig or Libertarian judge is just too big a risk to take.

Perhaps the most unseemly of the voter suppression bills would prohibit independent and unaffiliated voters from voting in primary elections (SB 564).

Current law allows political party executive committees to determine whether independents may participate in their party primaries, and last year, the state GOP voted to have closed primaries, beginning in 2026. There was a push by Morrisey and other more conservative Republicans to close the 2024 primary to prevent moderate independents from voting for more centrist candidates, but it failed.

Naturally, many independents took the figurative door slam as a snub and an insult, as if their participation would contaminate the purity of the Republican primary.

Independents denied access to a GOP ballot are left with two options, vote in the Democratic primary or stay home. The lead sponsor of the bill, Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, wants to make sure they have no options.

In the Senate Government Organization Committee, he gave two grounds for seeking the legislation: 1. That independent voters indeed “water down� party philosophy (presumably because they’re not extreme enough), and 2. The potential for members of one party to “mess with� the opposition party primary by registering independent in order to vote for weaker candidates.

Of course, both arguments are absolutely nonsensical, given that Republicans have closed their primaries, and Democrats could choose to do the same if they thought their primaries were being sabotaged. Although I’m not sure why anyone would try to sabotage a party that holds but 11 of 134 seats in the Legislature and no statewide or Congressional offices.

A more likely explanation is a fear that, over time, independent voters spurned by Republicans will migrate to Democratic primaries, and perhaps will come to recognize that many of their misconceptions about the party are not true.

The solution, according to Tarr and the GOP, is to dictate to the rival party who can and cannot vote in its own primary elections.

The explosion of voter suppression bills this session gives the impression that members of the majority party are scared that voters will come to their senses, and realize that the Republican Party does not have the best interests of working class families at heart. The GOP seems to have decided the best way to prevent that from happening is to create as many obstacles to voting as possible. That’s not how democracy is supposed to work.

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Speaking of elections, it’s worth taking a closer look at U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin’s scorching words in his order dismissing a case seeking a federal takeover of the state’s failing foster care system:

“West Virginia’s foster care system has cycled through inaction, bureaucratic indifference, shocking neglect, and temporary fixes for years. The blame squarely lies with West Virginia state government. When elected officials fail, the ballot box is the remedy.

“When government fails — when promises are made and usually broken, when reforms are always delayed or abandoned — people turn in desperation to the judiciary, but there are limits to what the courts can do. The Constitution does not permit federal courts to step in and govern.�

Indeed, as the regular session approaches its mid-point, the only bill addressing foster care that seems to have traction would allow prospective foster parents to block placements of children based on their sexual orientation or gender identity if said placement would offend the parents’ “religious or moral beliefs� (HB 2033).

Could someone explain to me how in the world this legislation addresses the critical shortage of foster families in the state?

As Judge Goodwin made clear, when elected officials fail to act, vote them out.

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Finally, regarding last week’s item on the explosion of communications offices and staff in state government, retired Division of Natural Resources officer and regular Gazette-Mail opinion page contributor Robert Beanblossom noted that while those offices have grown exponentially, at the same time, government transparency and accountability has declined significantly.

He pointed out that, despite the proliferation of so-called communications offices, more often than not, news reports on state officials or state agencies feature the line, “did not respond to a request for comment.�

Beanblossom said it was far different when he started working for the DNR in the early 1970s. He was encouraged to work independently with the news media, and had authority to issue press releases without prior approval or review.

“As a state employee, I enjoyed a great deal of freedom to speak in my area of expertise,� he said.

Years later, as he neared retirement, all that had changed. Beanblossom recalled doing an interview with the Gazette-Mail’s own Rick Steelhammer on the wildly controversial topic of the 70th anniversary of Smokey Bear, and afterward, getting called into the director’s office and reprimanded for working directly with Steelhammer instead of directing him to the proper communications channels.

“I don’t know how we reverse this trend, but it is deeply troubling,� Beanblossom said.

As long as too many elected officials regard the media as adversaries and purveyors of supposedly “fake news,� the trend will not change — unless of course the people heed Judge Goodwin’s call and vote them out.