A hearing has been scheduled in the case of a West Virginia senator who is challenging the results of the primary election he lost.
Sen. Chandler Swope, R-Mercer, submitted a challenge on the election results in seven Mingo County precincts after the Republican primary lost to her opponent Craig Hart.
The hearing will take place on July 18 at 9 a.m. at the Mingo County Courthouse.
In a notice filed earlier this month, Swope said he intends to challenge all votes cast in seven Mingo County precincts. He requested access to the entire county’s voter rolls and reserved the right to amend the challenge to include additional precincts if irregularities are found.
According to the West Virginia Department of State, Hart won 75%, or 2,152 votes, in Mingo County, while Swope received 364 and former state delegate Eric Porterfield received 344 votes.
Overall, Hart won the election with 4,847 votes, or about 40%, while Swope received 4,384 votes, or about 37%. Porterfield received 2,633 votes, or 22% of the vote.
Swope’s appeal includes four affidavits and a sworn letter from Mingo County voters alleging irregularities in the primary election.
Based on voter accounts and a Republican turnout of over 70% in 12 of 28 precincts (compared to a Republican turnout of about 47% in the county in the 2020 primary), Swope’s appeal states that it appears that many voters in Mingo County were wrongly given a choice of which primary to vote in rather than being given a ballot for their respective party affiliation.
“These problems affect several districts and in all likelihood explain the unusually high number of Republican votes cast,” Swope’s objection states.
In a joint motion, Swope and Hart requested a procedural hearing around July 1 to discuss procedural issues before the July 18 hearing, noting that both had filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Mingo County District Clerk’s office.
Anthony Majestro, a Charleston attorney representing Hart, said the Mingo Commission agreed to allow them to review voter rolls on Friday to determine whether it was mathematically possible for Swope to win the election in the contested districts.
Majestro said Swope’s challenge to specific districts raises the question of whether people who voted correctly are being disenfranchised and may affect other races. Swope’s argument about the high percentage of Republican votes in the primary is misleading, Majestro said, because it fails to take into account independent voters, whose numbers have risen in recent years while the number of registered Democrats has declined.
According to the Office of the Secretary of State of West VirginiaAs of April 2020, there were 3,291 registered Republicans, 12,691 registered Democrats, and 1,987 independent voters in Mingo County. As of April 2024, there were 5,113 registered Republicans, 7,202 Democrats, and 2,295 independent voters in the county.
“It should come as no surprise that independents are voting in the Republican primary rather than the Democratic primary, because there were no contested races in the Democratic primary… no local races,” Majestro said.
Swope was one of four senators from West Virginia losing seats in last month’s primaries.
Mingo County Commission President Nathan Brown did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
