Recent editorials from West Virginia newspapers:
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May 26
The Parkersburg News and Sentinel on a statewide discount for West Virginia parks:
Last week, Gov. Jim Justice said he wanted to thank all the front-line heroes in the battle against COVID-19 by doing something nice for them. But, he noted, it is inevitable that any list of such occupations will leave someone off.
So the governor decided every West Virginian should receive a 30% discount on state park lodging, from June 1 to Aug. 31. If you’re interested, go to the wvstateparks.com website. Use the promo code WVSTRONG for your reservation.
“At the end of the day, all West Virginians have been heroes throughout these unusual times,” Justice said. “Because of the resiliency and strength you have shown, following the advice of our experts, our state has seen some of the lowest rates of COVID-19 cases in the country. You’re saving lives and we can never thank you enough.”
It’s a smart move, not only because it honors those who have worked so hard to keep us safe and secure over the past couple of months, but because it will - we hope –encourage Mountain State residents to visit our state’s treasures, and to truly unplug and unwind while the wild and wonderfulness of our state takes care of THEM for a little while.
Justice is right about leaving some category of person off the front-line heroes list, of course. There have simply been too many people going above and beyond as we fight COVID-19. Here’s hoping lots of them do take advantage of the break, though.
They’ve earned it.
Online: https://www.newsandsentinel.com
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May 24
The Herald-Dispatch on voting in West Virginia’s June 9 primary election:
In case you haven’t noticed, West Virginia has an election coming up. People who live for politics tend to hype every election as being the most important in our lifetimes. This one probably isn’t, but that doesn’t diminish its importance.
If you’ve voted already, good. If you plan to vote by absentee ballot or in person, good. If you’re thinking about not voting, please reconsider.
This primary election isn’t life or death, but it will say a great deal about the future of the Mountain State. Consider what is at stake.
Gov. Jim Justice is fighting for his political life. He was elected as a Democrat, spent his first legislative session insulting the Republican leadership, then switched sides and became a Republican himself. Now he is challenged by others within his party. If Justice loses, he will be a lame duck for the last six months of his term.
The Democratic side has a set of challengers who are fighting over the philosophical future of the state party.
Then there’s the Legislature. All 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up, as are half the 34 seats in the State Senate. Both houses have been under Republican control for a few years following six decades of Democratic control. Do voters want to stay the course, or do they want to go back to the old ways?
Then there’s the state Supreme Court of Appeals. Three of the five seats on the court will be decided in this election. One seat is to fill an unexpired term, while the other two are for full 12-year terms. Are you satisfied with the current ideological direction of the court, or does it need to be changed? It’s your call. Your decision will have long-lasting effects.
At the federal level, all three of West Virginia’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are up. This could be the last election in which West Virginia has three seats in the House. If present trends hold, the state will lose one following this year’s census.
Side note: That’s another reason to fill out your census form if you haven’t already. West Virginia’s influence with the White House and the federal bureaucracy depends on an accurate census count. Not filling out your form is in effect sabotaging efforts to help the state.
On a local level, census results will be used to redistrict seats in both houses of the Legislature. If you’re not counted, your community will carry less clout at the Capitol than it should have.
Back to the election: The primary is only a few days away. It was postponed from May 12 to June 9 because of concerns surrounding the novel coronavirus pandemic. Because of those concerns, every registered voter is permitted to cast an absentee ballot in the primary. The deadline to apply for an absentee ballot is June 3. Early voting in person will be done May 27 through June 6 at county courthouses. You will need to comply with local security and health protocols to do that.
Or you can vote at your precinct as normal on Election Day itself.
This may not be the most important election in the history of the world, but for this state, it will be an important one that could determine the direction of government for a decade.
The deadline to register to vote has passed, so if you haven’t registered, you’ve lost your voice.
If you don’t care, then don’t vote. If you do care and if you haven’t voted already, please do.
Online: https://www.herald-dispatch.com
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May 23
The Register-Herald on the political divide over expanded access to mail-in ballots:
If West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner is prohibited by law from sharing details with the general public, as he says, then why did he go out of his way to announce that a voter fraud investigation associated with absentee ballots had been turned over to the federal prosecutors? The innuendo was thick, but what was his point? Or rather, what is his agenda?
Let’s be clear. Warner’s job in these matters is to deliver democracy in the form of a clean election and not to tarnish a method of voting that has proven popular and scandal free. His job and those of county clerks all across the state is to make the trains run on time, to adequately staff polling places and to give all voters the opportunity to cast a ballot - safely - even from the comfort of their own home. Citizens of the state agree as 220,000 of them, 18 percent of all registered voters, requested an absentee ballot.
Curious, we think, that Warner’s delusive hint of electoral troubles comes at a time when other Republican politicians - up to and including our president and governor - are railing against efforts by states to make wider use of mail-in paper ballots during a pandemic. Armed with no facts or study, President Trump tweeted this past on May 20, “Tremendous potential for voter fraud.” And at an April 23 news conference, Gov. Jim Justice said this: “The level of corruption with absentee is rampant.”
Balderdash, governor.
Voter fraud is a fake. Trump, Justice and Warner know that. So why mislead the electorate? Why cause doubt and, in doing so, undermine the integrity of the most basic exercise of a free and open democracy? And for our own secretary of state to be broadcasting the message, without evidence, leading up to early voting, well, it smacks of a lame attempt at voter suppression.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, yes, it is an attempt to disenfranchise targeted populations of the voting public - primarily, people who have a history of voting for Democrats.
But despite the hyperbole, such fraud barely exists. The state of Oregon, for example, has provided more than 100 million mail-in ballots to voters since 2000 and has documented a grand total of 12 cases of fraud. Similarly, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, “an exhaustive investigative journalism analysis of all known voter fraud cases identified 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud from 2000 to 2012” - an eight-year period during which billions of votes were cast.
When our elected leaders side with negligible examples of voter fraud against the potential impact of a pandemic on your health, well, that’s a pretty clear signal about who these folks are most interested in - and it isn’t you.
If West Virginia did not allow absentee voting on a grand scale, we would have had close to a quarter of a million people who may not have bothered, who may have divorced themselves from the democratic process this trip around the sun. There is nothing American about that.
Is that what Warner, Justice and Trump want? Probably.
They are probably hypnotized, frozen by fear of surveys that indicate Democrats receive more favorable outcomes as the voting process is simplified, as the Seattle Times reported recently. But dozens of states have more accessible voting methods already in place, with 38 allowing early voting, 35 allowing absentee ballots and five relying on a mail-in system to conduct their elections. And guess what? Republicans are elected to every level of government in those states, including those that allow their citizens to vote primarily by mail.
Go just across the river to Ohio where Gov. Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, both Republicans, are encouraging people to vote by mail - a direct contradiction to how it’s playing out here in the Mountain State.
Voter suppression in the U.S. has been on the rise after a surge of voter interest and participation in the presidential election of 2008 that helped carry Barack Obama, this nation’s first black elected president, into office. In 2004, the voter participation gap between White and African-American voters was 6.9 percent. In 2008 it was 0.9 percent.
The response? More than 30 states introduced voter suppression legislation in 2011 and 16 states passed such measures, making it harder for Americans to participate in our democracy. That ignoble effort continues to this day, and it must stop.
In this era of learning how to live in the midst of a pandemic, we need to encourage any means by which we can capture safely the full voice of democracy.
Online: https://www.register-herald.com
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