West Virginia will use technology from Scytl for an online ballot system for military members and other voters who are overseas. Barcelona-based Scytl said Wednesday that the state used its technology in eight counties under a pilot program during the 2010 elections.
Recent federal court rulings appear to threaten West Virginia’s $1,000-per-election cap on contributions to political action committees that spend independently of candidates, U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston said at a Wednesday hearing. But Johnston held off ruling immediately on whether to block the cap temporarily. Stay the Course West Virginia and two of its would-be contributors, an individual and a corporation, sued in May alleging the state limit chills their free speech rights. They requested the preliminary injunction pending the outcome of their lawsuit. With 97 days before the general election, the independent expenditure PAC says it seeks to support certain incumbents while targeting their opponents.
The State Elections Commission in a July 31 emergency meeting approved a motion to “actively defend constitutionality of matching funds law passed by the Legislature.” Allen Loughry, a Republican running for West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, was the only candidate for that office hoping to take part in the state’s public financing pilot project. The Commission decided in a July 17 vote to not release public financing funds to Loughry.
Supreme Court candidate Allen Loughry, the sole recipient of public campaign funds from a West Virginia pilot project, announced Monday that he had petitioned the Supreme Court to compel the release of the program’s so-called rescue funding. The Republican also said that he has weighed in on a federal lawsuit that seeks to strike down the pilot project’s rescue funding provision. Neither filing was immediately available late Monday.
An independent political action committee and a group of potential donors are suing West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant and the state’s prosecuting attorneys, arguing that some of the state’s election laws and policies violate their First Amendment rights. Stay the Course West Virginia, an unaffiliated independent expenditure PAC; David Bailey, chairman and treasurer of Stay the Course; Pineville Lumber Inc., a West Virginia company and potential donor; and Thomas Stephen Bailey, a resident and potential donor, filed their complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia Wednesday. In addition to Tennant, the plaintiffs name Scott Ash, prosecuting attorney for Mercer County, as a defendant in the suit. He is being sued as the representative of class of 55 prosecuting attorneys in the state, who are responsible for enforcing the criminal penalties associated with the state’s Election Code.
In a recently filed federal lawsuit, a West Virginia independent expenditure political action committee says a Secretary of State policy that prohibits independent expenditures by corporations limits free speech rights. Stay the Course West Virginia and its chairman David Bailey along with Pineville Lumber Inc. and Kanawha County voter Thomas Stephen Bailey filed the suit May 23 against Secretary of State Natalie Tennant and Mercer County Prosecutor Scott Ash. Bailey created Stay the Course West Virginia to make independent expenditures supporting the re-election of certain incumbents before the state’s November general election. However, the state’s election code prohibits a person from contributing more than $1,000 to candidates running for any public office, the suit states. “Any person violating any provision of West Virginia Code… is guilty of a misdemeanor and is subject to a fine of not more than $1,000 and/or confinement in jail for not more than one year,” the suit notes.
The West Virginia Legislature can control who can get on a primary election ballot, but it can’t exceed federal law on a candidate’s eligibility, election officials said. State officials and others have been looking at options after imprisoned felon Keith Judd attracted nearly 41 percent of the vote against President Barack Obama this month in the West Virginia primary. While there have been criticisms Judd should never have gotten on the ballot, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant said Judd met all of the legal requirements to be on the ballot. Judd qualified for the Democratic primary ballot after he mailed in a candidacy form and paid a $2,500 filing fee from Texas. He’s serving a 17-year federal prison sentence in Texas. Statewide results from the May 8 primary show Judd with 73,138 votes to Obama’s 106,770.
A candidate on the losing end of a ballot-stuffing scheme in Lincoln County is now suing a half dozen current and former county officials in federal court for $57,000, plus unspecific punitive damages. The lawsuit also sheds new light on Lincoln County’s 2010 Democratic primary, which is the subject of an ongoing federal investigation. Former county commission candidate Phoebe Harless said the officials – including all three sitting county commissioners – and a former felon deprived her of her civil rights by stacking the deck against her candidacy. Nitro attorney Harvey Peyton filed the lawsuit late last week in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. It names the commissioners, the commission’s secretary, the former sheriff, the former county clerk, a government insurance risk pool and Wandell “Rocky” Adkins.
The nation has moved on after its brief fixation last week with the felon who won 41 percent against Barack Obama, but West Virginia continues to wrestle with the aftermath of its May 8 primary. Phil Kabler of the Charleston Gazette reported this weekend on two conspiracy theories making the rounds. The first holds that GOP operatives were working behind the scenes to gin up the vote for Keith Judd as a means of embarassing Obama. The second speculates that top Democratic Party officials “went to lengths to assure that West Virginia voters would not be aware that he was a convicted inmate sitting in a federal prison in Texas.”
An imprisoned felon’s surprising showing in West Virginia’s Tuesday primary has officials reviewing the rules governing how candidates get their names on the ballot. Keith Judd received more than 72,400 votes against President Barack Obama, around 41 percent of the total, providing stark evidence of the incumbent Democrat’s unpopularity in the state. Judd has run for president since at least 1996, frequently petitioning to get on the ballot in West Virginia and other states. But since 1999, he’s pursued his candidacies from federal prison: he’s serving a 17-year sentence for making threats, and is currently held at the Texarkana Federal Correctional Institute in Texas. Senate Judiciary Chairman Corey Palumbo sees this topic as ripe for legislative review during the monthly interim study meetings that begin next week.
Elections officials in Brooke County were counting ballots well into Wednesday morning because of problems with two voting machines. Brooke County Clerk Sylvia Benzo said she lost track of time as poll workers tried to sort through election night confusion. Benzo said there was a problem in one of the Follansbee precincts early on that elections officials knew they would have to remedy. But there was another issue with a voting machine at a Weirton precinct. “I didn’t know about the one with the problem in Weirton until later in the evening, and that one ironed out and we were able to upload that information into our system and that one was OK. But this last machine that had a total of 12 votes left on it, we couldn’t get those off of there,” Benzo said.
So how did a felon incarcerated in a Texas prison manage to win 41 percent of the Democratic primary vote against the president of the United States? For starters, Keith Judd was either clever or lucky enough to have filed for the ballot in the heart of Appalachia’s anti-Obama belt. West Virginia’s county-by-county numbers tell an interesting story: Judd defeated the incumbent president in 9 counties across the state, and held him under 60 percent in 30 of West Virginia’s 55 counties. Whatever other forces may be at work in the Appalachian opposition to Obama — the role of race has been debated since his 2008 run — it’s clear the administration’s energy policies played a big role in the president’s lackluster performance. Locally, it’s referred to as “the war on coal.”
Election officials in West Virginia are scrambling to fix a major mistake on the Republican primary ballot that is affecting all 55 counties. Hancock County Clerk Eleanor Straight explained to NEWS9’s Kelly Camarote that the problem was revealed to county officials during a four-hour conference call with the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office. “We always double check, but there’s always a margin for error,” said Straight. “It was previously stated there were 18 delegates to be chosen for the primary election. The actual total was 19.” The mistake was found by state Republican party leaders after Hancock County already printed and sent absentee ballots to military personnel serving outside the county. “We were allowed to put a sticker over the one little sentence that said 18,” said Straight. “And to make it 19.” Straight said the voting machines need to be reprogrammed as well.
We’re in the middle of another contentious primary election season and a debate has emerged about whether voters should be required to provide state-issued identification at polling precincts. Currently West Virginia election law follows the Help America Vote Act, federal regulations which outline voting practices and standards. Secretary of State Natalie Tennant said during an interview with The State Journal’s Decision Makers that a process is in place now that provides checks to the identification and registration process. ” … While Tennant agrees with making more elections more secure, she said she has concerns over whether this type of requirement would discourage or intimidate some potential voters from participating in the election process. “It is a right and not a privilege to vote,” said Tennant. “Someone who doesn’t drive, can’t get there to get a card, or can’t afford a state issued ID card.”
Top West Virginia legislators have asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s decision and let them keep a new Congressional map in place. In an emergency appeal filed late Friday, key legislative leaders and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) said that drawing up a new map would cost too much money and take too much time.
Same-day voter registration could become a reality in the Mountain State. Representatives from North Carolina joined Steven Carbo of Demos, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on national issues, in testifying before the West Virginia Legislature’s Judiciary Subcommittee C Jan. 9 to talk about same-day voter registration. Nine states, including North Carolina, currently have a same-day voter registration system in place, and Carbo said those states have seen a dramatic increase in voter participation. “We have historically seen voter participation in same-day states 10 to 12 points higher than in non-same-day states,” Carbo said.
Federal judges have told West Virginia legislators they have just two weeks to overhaul a congressional redistricting plan that required months of work and controversy to be approved initially. That isn’t much time, but lawmakers have no choice but to make it happen.
Every 10 years, states are required to redraw boundaries of districts used to elect members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The process is meant to take into account population shifts during the preceding decade. But parties in Jefferson and Kanawha counties objected to the way legislators changed the boundaries earlier this year. They filed a lawsuit in federal court.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel announced its ruling. The order, issued on a 2-1 vote (Judge John Bailey dissented), was that a new congressional district map must be prepared. The two judges who objected to the existing plan said it does not come close enough to equalizing populations within West Virginia’s three congressional districts.
West Virginia lawmakers must redraw the state’s three congressional districts by Jan. 17 or a federal court will do it for them, a three-judge federal panel said Tuesday. The bombshell ruling could shakeup the 2012 election by forcing a reconfiguration of the political terrain held by Reps. Shelley Moore Capito and David McKinley, both R-W.Va, and Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va. All three are up for election this year.
The panel said in a 2-1 ruling that West Virginia’s current House districts violate the U.S. Constitution. Jefferson County Commission filed a lawsuit over the current district plans. The county said state lawmakers unconstitutionally placed several thousand more people into the 2nd Congressional District than the 1st and 3rd districts. The county also argued the 2nd covers an unnecessarily large geographic area.
Capito represents the 2nd. Mckinley represents the 1st. Rahall represents the 3rd. Spokespeople for the Capito and McKinley did not immediately comment. Unless the ruling is appealed and overturned — something that would have to be done by the U.S. Supreme Court — West Virginia lawmakers now have until Jan. 17 to propose a new plan, or the court will adopt a plan of its own, likely one based on plans rejected earlier this year by state Senate lawmakers.
That court-approved redistricting plan is costing Raleigh County more than a few thousand voters being shipped to adjoining counties. All told, once the need to add 24 new precincts — and five voting machines for each — along with poll workers, janitorial service and, in some locales, rental fees are taken into account, Raleigh County’s tab is a whopping $462,000, says Commissioner Dave Tolliver.
Only last week, the state Supreme Court upheld the hotly disputed plan for the House of Delegates, as well as the Senate’s non-controversial one, saying neither one violated the West Virginia Constitution. What no one mentioned in all the debates in the House was the bill that will follow.
Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said he will refuse to sign a maintenance contract for the county’s electronic voting machines. Earlier this month, Carper and county commissioners Hoppy Shores and Dave Hardy reluctantly agreed to pay a contract to Election Systems & Software to provide maintenance for the county’s electronic voting machines. The maintenance contract would have cost the county $56,000 a year for four years.
In 2005, under former secretary of state Betty Ireland, state officials negotiated a sole-source contract with ES&S to provide touch-screen and optical-scan voting machines all over the state. State officials told county election officials earlier this year they would be passing on responsibility for maintaining the voting machines to county government.
The state contract gave ES&S a virtual monopoly on voting machines in West Virginia and a monopoly on fixing the machines if they break. In the past, Kanawha County officials have had trouble getting in touch with ES&S representatives and finding qualified technicians to work on the machines.
With the 2011 special gubernatorial special election approaching, employees of The Lincoln Journal were somewhat surprised recently when a mailing was received from a group called West Virginia Advocates. The mailing from the organization, based in Charleston and claiming to represent people with disabilities, included, among other things, a duplicated absentee ballot application.
Since absentee ballots and, specifically, absentee ballot applications had become the focal point of a 2010 election controversy in Lincoln County, newspaper reporters were intrigued that the application was reproduced in the mailing. In addition, in sections detailing the process used to cast absentee ballots, the mailing purported to answer questions voters might have about using the applications. The major outcome of last year’s Lincoln County case was a decision by the special circuit judge in the matter that all portions of absentee ballot applications must be completed by the voter who casts an absentee ballot.
Kanawha County Commissioners opted not to go with a statewide contract for maintenance of electronic voting machines and instead struck their own agreement with Electronic Systems & Software.
Commissioners discussed at Thursday’s meeting whether to get in on the statewide contract, which was negotiated between ES&S and Secretary of State Natalie Tennant’s office. Chief Deputy County Clerk David Dodd said that although he hasn’t yet read the entire contract, he believes it would be cheaper to sign an individual contract with the company.
The county will pay ES&S $56,269 a year for four years to maintain the 374 electronic voting machines and two tabulators. Dodd said the county saved $800 for maintenance on just one tabulation machine by going with the individual contract instead of the statewide agreement. “Going with the state contract would have definitely cost us more money,” Dodd said.
The West Virginia Supreme Court has rejected a request by Janet “J.T.” Thompson, Charleston Mayor Danny Jones’ lone challenger in the May election, to block Charleston City Council from holding a hearing on her claims of voter fraud. According to the Court’s order list Friday, all five justices voted to turn down her request for a writ of prohibition.
Jennifer Bundy, a spokeswoman for the Court, said Monday the individual order was not yet ready. The Court’s ruling means that the results of the tribunal, which rejected all of Thompson’s claims, will remain.
Although some county clerks in the state have yet to be reimbursed for the cost of the last election in May, they already are gearing up for the return of voters to the polls.
Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick said the state has not yet paid the county the approximately $314,000 it cost to hold the special primary election in May. And now that her employees are preparing for the upcoming special gubernatorial general election on Oct. 4, the county will soon be racking up more bills. “We’d like to have our money,” McCormick said.
Hancock County Clerk Eleanor Straight called news that the county would soon be responsible for maintenance on its touch-screen voting machines “a surprise” with renewal of the five-year maintenance agreement due Sept. 1.
Straight told the Hancock County Commission on Thursday that all the county clerks in the state responsible for election operations just learned of the local responsibility.
In a letter to the commission, West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant said that the acceptance agreement approved five years ago states the county commission would take over ownership of the voting machines and be responsible for maintenance after the five-year maintenance agreement ended. At that point, she said, her office would be released of responsibility.
Kanawha County commissioners will have to come up with $60,000 to $70,000 to pay for maintenance of electronic voting machines. Secretary of State Natalie Tennant’s office was in the process of negotiating a statewide maintenance contract with Electronic Systems and Software that could have reduced the cost for counties, Commission President Kent Carper said.
But, Carper believes the negotiations must have stalled and the counties around the state were left holding the bag. “And we have an election coming up,” he said. Warranties for the machines expire at the end of September.
Defeated mayoral candidate Janet “JT” Thompson’s quest to overturn the May 17 city election came to an abrupt end Thursday when Charleston City Council dismissed her challenge on multiple grounds.
Council members wasted little time considering Thompson’s June 3 Notice of Election Contest and later filings, especially since Thompson — as promised — skipped the court-like tribunal entirely.
Defeated mayoral candidate Janet “JT” Thompson told City Council Monday she won’t take part in the tribunal to hear the election challenge she filed. Even so, council members voted to give Thompson one more chance to appear at that court-like hearing on Thursday.
… Thompson, who has filed a number of legal challenges after losing to Jones in the May 17 election by more than a 2-1 margin, spoke briefly at the start of the council meeting Monday evening.
West Virginia is hosting Secretaries of State from across the country this week. The annual meeting for the National Association of Secretaries of State gets fully underway Monday morning at Glade Springs Resort in Raleigh County.
“It’s easy to be a great host in West Virginia,” Secretary of State Natalie Tennant said.
Those attending will be discussing 2012 election issues, business identity theft, the future of voting systems and new possible state laws for voting. They’ll learn about social media and business identity theft.
According to a Friday news release from Fayetteville mayoral candidate Thomas Feazell, he will demand a recount of the election. The initial result of the election put incumbent Jim Akers ahead by just five votes. Initially refusing to concede the election, Feazell did not pick up enough votes from challenged voters to win the race, but did narrow the gap to only three votes.
“Each and every voter in Fayetteville deserves to be certain that their vote counted and was counted correctly,” Feazell said in a statement. “That’s what I hope this recount ensures.”