dbeard@dominionpost.com
MORGANTOWN – The Senate bill to align municipal election dates with statewide primary and general elections will be up for passage on Monday.
Senators adopted an amendment to tweak the bill’s compliance date for municipalities on Friday, moving it from July 1, 2030 to July 1, 2032.
The date change applies to municipalities with charters that have to be amended by the voters, and to municipalities without charters that can do it simply by ordinance.
Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, offered the amendment. He serves on Judiciary, which approved the bill and advanced it to the floor.
He said that after the meeting where they approved it, some members raised concerns about the 2030 date and the prospect of some counties and cities having to redistrict and redraw wards and precincts where the wards and precincts now cross municipal boundaries.
The Senate adopted the amendment without debate and the bill moves to third reading for passage on Monday.
Several previous efforts to pass this legislation failed. Bills in 2023 and 2024 began and died in the House of Delegates. The reasoning behind the repeated efforts, legislators have said, is to save municipalities money and boost voter turnout.
A similar House bill is sitting in the Local Governments Subcommittee, where it hasn’t seen an agenda.
Locally, Granville voters chose last November to align their election dates with county dates starting in May 2026. Star City and Westover elections were held in conjunction with the county starting in May 2024.
But for Morgantown, last October, City Council voted against giving the choice of election dates to city voters. An ordinance to place that proposed charter change on the city’s April 29, 2025, ballot failed on first reading.
