MORGANTOWN — If you Google “municipal election turnout,” you’re met with pages of news articles, opinion pieces and think tank white papers lamenting the growing apathy voters nationwide have developed regarding local elections and questioning what can be done to reverse it.
Morgantown is no exception.
Based on the unofficial turnout numbers from the April 25 election, the city actually saw its best turnout since 2017.
The 2023 election involving four of city council’s seven seats drew 1,697 voters to the polls. That’s up from 1,517 in 2021 and 1,642 in 2019.
The bump in turnout coupled with the pruning of 5,759 registered voters from voter rolls since 2021 resulted in a turnout of 12.96% in an election that will likely end up costing the city somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 — roughly double that of the 2021 election — according to City Clerk Christine Wade.
Wade explained much of that money went into a concerted effort by the city to get election information in front of voters. The city sent every voter registered in 2021 and 2023 a state-mandated letter explaining changes in polling locations. The city also used Morgantown Utility Board invoices to mail out more than 11,000 election fliers on two occasions leading up to the start of early voting.
In addition, the city pushed information through social media and increased the amount of election-oriented signage purchased, including a banner spanning High Street.
Added to the city’s efforts were weeks of media coverage, online discussion, independently organized candidate forums and hundreds of campaign signs blanketing the city.
The result?
Seven of every eight registered voters in the city chose not to participate.
“I think my feeling is more why don’t they [vote] and could I have done more or done a better job of getting the word out,” Wade said when asked if she’s frustrated by the lack of engagement. “I don’t know why really. The only thing I can do is keep trying to come up with better ways of getting the communication out.”
Circling back to the aforementioned Google search, a suggestion that runs through many of the results is the question of moving municipal elections in cycle with state/national elections.
In a 2021 paper for the Manhattan Institute think tank, Michael Hartney contends the data shows making that move is the easiest and surest way to increase participation. According to Hartney, cities should act accordingly. If they don’t, states should step in.
Hartney says the data shows that as voter turnout falls, participation begins to skew out of step with community demographics in terms of age, economic status and diversity.
He writes, “Especially for the political health of the country’s municipalities, increasing turnout matters. Voting signifies the consent of the governed; and it is much harder to take seriously the democratic nature of public policymaking if local political authorities are elected only by a tiny fraction of the electorate, especially if that fraction is unrepresentative of the community.”
The idea of moving the city election in-cycle with the county has been considered in Morgantown, most recently in 2018.
Monongalia County Clerk Carye Blaney has repeatedly said she’s been a proponent of municipalities bringing their elections in line with the county since taking office in 2007.
She explained a city like Morgantown could make that change with no real extra cost or work for the county, but a tremendous savings of time and money for the municipality.
Blaney told The Dominion Post that her stance has not changed on that issue, pointing to voters in Star City recently choosing to move that town’s election onto the county ballot. She said the city of Westover has also initiated that conversation with her office.
While Morgantown City Council ultimately did put a charter change regarding the city’s election process before its voters in 2021, those changes extended council terms to four years and staggered elections so no more than four seats were up every two years. It did not include an option to move the election date.
Conversations about moving the election have traditionally faced concerns about the city’s issues getting lost in the tumult and partisanship of state and national races.
It was even suggested during the 2018 conversation that in the case of a city election, a more informed and engaged pocket of voters is preferable to larger turnout numbers.
Ultimately the decision to move or not move the election falls to city council — for now.
Wade pointed out that there have been unsuccessful bills presented the last two legislative cycles that would mandate a move in-cycle with the county. She said such a bill is expected to return the next time around.
“Personally, I enjoy the elections. I like to do them. I like being involved in them. I know that, in talking to some of our council members, it’s nice to have our own so people know exactly what is going on,” she said. “But if that’s what the city chooses to do next time or the legislature says we have to or that we should, we’ll have to adapt.”
