Incumbent state Senator Chandler Swope, who apparently lost a primary re-election bid, has filed an official challenge to results in Mingo County and alleges there is evidence that Democrats improperly voted in Republican races.
Swope, a Republican from Bluefield, joins three other candidates for local races who are questioning the Mingo County results. Swope filed a notice of primary election challenge Wednesday and is asking to examine poll books across Mingo County for irregularities.
“Unfortunately, it appears that the 2024 primary election, at least in part, in Mingo County may have been ‘irreversibly tainted,’” according to the filing on behalf of Swope.
“Accordingly, in each precinct wherein those irregularities are found to have occurred all votes cast in the primary election for West Virginia’s 6th Senate District should be excluded.”
After primary election results came in for the swath of a district that includes all of Mercer County and parts of Wayne, McDowell and Mingo counties, Swope got 4,384 votes. That put him behind challenger Craig Hart, a Lenore (Mingo County) resident who got 4,847 votes. Another candidate, former Delegate Eric Porterfield, wound up with 2,633 votes.
The West Virginia Senate has a Republican supermajority that will remain in place no matter what happens with this race. But the outcome could affect which Republicans have the most power within the caucus. A proxy battle between more moderate, business-focused Republicans and farther-right, culture-focused Republicans has long been simmering. Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, lost his primary election and the contest to take over as a new president is likely to bring divisions further toward the surface.
Swope, whose contracting business is Swope Construction, received primary election endorsements from business groups like the political action committees of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce and the West Virginia Manufacturers Association. Hart spent $14,719 on his campaign, where he was his own top contributor, and has a campaign website advocating against digital currency and “forced vax” and in favor of demolishing the deep state and respecting God’s rainbow.
Lawyers for Swope want to know more about what happened in Mingo County voting precincts, where Hart received 2,152 votes, Swope got 364 votes and Porterfield got 344 votes. Wednesday’s filing includes affidavits by several Mingo County voters.
One voter states that he is a registered Democrat but was allowed to vote in the Republican primary at the Williamson Memorial Fieldhouse. Another voter alleges in an unsworn letter that he was given a choice about which party primary to vote in, even though he is registered as a party member. Two voters registered as independents contended that a poll worker stood behind them and watched them vote.
The filing by Swope also contends Republican voter turnout in Mingo County was out of line with what happened elsewhere in the state: “Voter turnout numbers across Mingo County suggest county-wide discrepancies that potentially affected every precinct in the county.”
Overall turnout for the primary election across West Virginia was about 30%, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. Mingo County’s overall turnout was about the same, 29%.
But the party breakdown in Mingo County was significantly different.
Of 7,203 Democrats in the county, 1,440 votes were cast — for a Democratic turnout of about 20%, according to the Swope filing.
Of 5,133 Republicans in Mingo County, 3,554 votes were cast — which represents a Republican turnout of more than 69%. Of 28 precincts in Mingo County, 12 reported a turnout of more than 70%.
The filing on behalf of Swope contends that the numbers and accounts by voters show that “many Mingo County voters were improperly given a choice as to which primary they wanted to participate in, rather than simply being given the ballot of their respective party registration. These issues span multiple precincts and in all likelihood explain the unusually high number of Republican ballots submitted.”
Republican political adviser Greg Thomas, who works closely with members of the state Senate’s majority, questioned what happened in Mingo County.
“There’s been irregularities. There’s all kinds of people saying, ‘I’m a Democrat. I voted in this.’ They’ll ask the county commission to have the county clerk open up the poll books: ‘We want to see the poll books. We want to see what happened here,’” Thomas said on MetroNews’ “Talkline.”
Angie Browning, Mingo County’s chief deputy clerk, said there is no evidence of shady activity in the election. She suggested that with few Democratic candidates on the ballot, independent voters tended to ask for Republican ballots and caused that participation to appear unusually high.
“Our poll workers are trained to do their job,” Browning said on “Talkline.” “They know what they’re doing. They know that when your independent voter comes in, they can select. So, just shot in the dark, me being a voter, outside of my job, if I went in there as an independent voter I’m going to select a Republican ballot because most people here — you know, Mingo County’s got a reputation — they take their county politics serious.”
Browning acknowledged several provisional ballots where Democrats wanted to vote Republican ballots — and then poll workers challenged the ballots. Those disputed ballots would have been taken up during county canvassing.
She said the dispute has been discouraging to local poll workers.
“Most of my poll workers are veteran poll workers, and now after this I’ll be lucky to get 20 poll workers because they’re all calling in here scared because they don’t want to work anymore because we’re always being accused of something,” Browning said.
