WILLIAMSON – The ACLU of West Virginia has filed a petition alleging that nearly 700 Mingo County residents were denied the basic right to vote because of an incorrect ballot.
The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia filed an Election Day petition on behalf of James Williamson against Mingo County Clerk Larry Croaff.
The complaint identifies Williamson as a 55-year-old Mingo County resident and Democrat who voted early in the 6th place race.vol State Senate District.
Williamson and the ACLU want a court order requiring Croaff to correct the error and conduct a fair election for the position.
In the first days of early voting, voters in the district used ballots that listed Randy Fowler as the Democratic candidate for the position. However, Fowler was declared ineligible after winning the May primary. However, Jeff Disibbio, the actual candidate, was left off the general election ballot. About 700 people, including Williamson, cast ballots using the incorrect ballot.
The ACLU says Mingo County officials then told voters who were given the incorrect ballot that they could cast a corrected ballot on a provisional ballot. But the ACLU says state election officials believe this is not the right solution.
The ACLU says it’s impossible to count provisional ballots because ballots already cast are confidential. He says there is no way to know which ballots should be invalidated in favor of a new provisional ballot. This will unfairly disadvantage Disibbio because votes that could have been intended for him will not be counted, while votes for his opponent will be.
“This is not a partisan issue, it is an issue of ballot integrity,” ACLU-WV attorney Nick Ward said in a press release. “Now more than ever, we must ensure that our elections are fair and that everyone’s vote is counted, regardless of who they vote for or how likely that candidate is to win. This right is fundamental to our democracy.
“The race was decided by far fewer than 700 votes. In a democracy, voters choose their leaders, not the other way around. Therefore, we are asking the court to order the Mingo County clerk to do everything in his power to remedy this situation and ensure that every eligible West Virginian in his community can meaningfully exercise his right to vote.”
In the same Mingo County race, there were problems in the primary.
Incumbent state senator Chandler Swope challenged the results of the Republican primary after losing to Mingo County opponent Craig Hart.
Swope won the majority of votes in Mercer County and parts of McDowell and Wayne counties in the district. However, Hart won Mingo County by a vote of 2,151 to 364, giving him a total victory of 463 votes.
Swope alleged that “the unusually high Republican turnout in some precincts was the result of some registered Democrats voting in the Republican primary,” and Swope wanted the results from those precincts to be completely excluded, which would have changed the election result.
In August, Swope withdrew his request, saying the legal burden of excluding sums from these precincts would be too high.
