MORGANTOWN — With new district maps taking effect for this year’s state House and Senate and U.S. House elections, people may be wondering what district they’re in. The Dominion Post has received a number of questions about this.
Here’s a broad example of the changes. Currently, if you live in Monongalia County, you are either in the 51st House District, which covers most of the county; the 5th, which includes a small bit of the western end; or the 49th, which includes a small bit of the southeast tip.
The 51st has five delegates, and the 5th and 49th have one each.
Those districts are in effect through the end of this calendar year. This year’s election is for choosing representatives to the new districts, but the people elected won’t be seated until January 2023.
In the new map, Monongalia Count has six districts, each with just one delegate: the 77th, which has the largest territory and covers all of the western end; the 78th, which covers the rural eastern portion between Cheat Lake and Browns Chapel; the 79th, covering part of Morgantown and South Hills; the 80th, which includes Suncrest, Star City and Granville; the 81st, which includes the WVU Research Park and the airport; and the 82nd, which covers the Cheat Lake area from the Monongahela River to the Preston County line.
For the state Senate, Mon is represented by the 2nd and 13th Districts; the 14th no longer juts into Mon County. The 13th includes Morgantown and Fairmont, but there are a lot of fiddly bits along the border between the 2nd and 13th.
To find out what districts you’re in, the Secretary of State’s website has a tool to tell you.
You can go to sos.wv.gov and click on the govotewv.com link (or just directly to govotewv.com).
That takes you to a page where you’ll see at the top a link to the interactive map for voting districts and precincts (your polling place may change along with your district). That takes you to mapwv.gov/vote (which you can also go to directly).
The right side of that page allows you to type in your address.
We typed in the address of The Dominion Post office. That showed us that we are in Mon County Precinct 30, Central Magisterial District, House District 79, Senate District 13, U.S. House District 2.
There’s a little “x” at the top right corner of this window that lets you get rid of it and allows you to see a full page spread of the precinct, magisterial, state House and Senate maps.
Mon, Preston and Marion counties are currently all in U.S. House District 1. Because the state lost population, it’s gone from three House districts to two, so all three counties will be in the new District 2.
Now the districts run north to south: Districts 1, 2 and 3.
In making the new U.S. House map, legislators split the state into northern and southern districts and flipped the numbering —– for no particular stated reason other than they just wanted to. So the south is District 1 and the north is District 2.
Finally, if you want to see who’s running for your office in your U.S. House, state Senate and House districts, you can find a link at the top of the govotewv.com page.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp
EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
