The House Judiciary Committee advanced a couple of bills affecting West Virginia election laws.
The bills were left over from a Judiciary Committee agenda earlier in the week when other topics went long and delegates couldn’t get to the election policies.
HB 4017 would make several election law changes, including establishing criminal penalties for coercing or offering payment for unlawful registration; and for casting a ballot in person after having voted an absentee ballot.
Delegate Josh Holstein, R-Boone, sponsor of the bill said the intent “is to prohibit any kind of fraud.”
Delegate Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, asked if double balloting, absentee and then in-person, occurs regularly.
Deak Kersey, chief of staff for the Secretary of State’s office, said casting a ballot after voting via absentee ballot does sometimes happen.
Kersey said, “There’s a procedure in place to make sure that folks that submit an absentee ballot don’t get a regular ballot in the polling place on Election Day.”
Fluharty wondered if that’s the case, why a change in the law would be necessary.
Delegate Joey Garcia, D-Marion, proposed an amendment to the bill to try to clarify that items of very little value would not constitute an illegal payment for a vote.
He said he was trying to protect get-out-the-vote efforts “trying to register people to vote and they may give bottled water, an apple, certainly don’t want them to be giving out a thing of whiskey.”
“So I think that’s greater than de minimis. But I think things like that, to me make common sense that we’re not trying to criminalize what I’ve seen is very normal voter
registration drives.”
The proposal that would have allowed “de minimis” gifts for voters was voted down.
The bill passed the majority of the committee and now goes to the House floor.
HB 4350 would prohibit the filling of a vacancy on the ballot after the close of the candidate filing period.
Current law allows party executive committees or their chairs to fill such vacancies for a limited amount of time, about two weeks, after the close of the filing period.
This bill would state that the vacancy cannot be filled and the vacancy would continue.
Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, said “this is one of a series of election-related bills that make it harder to register, make it harder to run for office.
“I can’t support that. That’s not the type of democracy that I want to live in. I want to live in a country where we encourage people to run for office and have as much choice as possible, where we encourage people to register to vote so they can choose their leaders. And we encourage people to actually cast votes.”
Another election-related bill was bumped from today’s agenda. This was among those that the committee also didn’t get around to considering on Monday.
So the committee has not yet taken up HB 4016, which would prohibit the delivery of unsolicited absentee ballot applications to any person who has not specifically requested one.
In 2020, when the nation was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and the governor had declared a
health-related state of emergency, county clerks mailed absentee ballot application postcards to all registered voters for the Primary Election.
West Virginia Citizen Action expressed concern that the House bill will “have a chilling effect on those who work to encourage voting by prohibiting the distribution of a public document available for download from the Secretary of State’s website.”
Earlier this week, the Judiciary Committee advanced a bill, House Bill 4205, specifying the Legislature has the ability to bring legal actions against state government officials who make or attempt unauthorized changes in state election laws.
