HUNTINGTON – A federal judge says West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner’s office has to figure out a new way to determine how candidates are placed on the ballot.
U.S. District Judge Chuck Chambers issued an injunction Aug. 10 regarding the order in which candidates will appear on the Nov. 3 general election ballot. Chambers, however, did not suggest a new way to do it.
A day later, Warner’s office filed an appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. The appeal asked for the court to issue a stay regarding Chambers’ injunction. The deadline for the state to randomly draw candidate names for down-ballot races is Aug. 25.
Chambers
“To mandate one of the many possibilities would be too great of an intrusion into the sovereignty of West Virginia’s political branches,” Chambers wrote in the injunction, which followed a three-day trial last week.
Chambers said the law about ballot placement is an “unquestionably partisan provision” to the party of the sitting president. The law establishes that “the party whose candidate for president received the highest number of votes at the last preceding presidential election is to be placed in the left, or first column, row or page.”
“The party benefiting from West Virginia’s law may shift over time, but this does not mean the statute is nonpartisan,” Chambers wrote in his injunction. “Voters have favored Republican presidential candidates since George W. Bush in 2000, so the ballot order statute has kept Republican candidates at the top of ballots for the past twenty years without interruption.”
The law was established in 1991 when Chambers, a Democrat, was speaker of the House of Delegates.
The case Chambers ruled on was filed by House of Delegates candidate Dakota Nelson, a Democrat, and state Democratic Party leaders.
Nelson appeared last on the ballot in 2018 when he ran for the House and failed to make the general election ballot. He is running again this year in District 16, which covers parts of Cabell and Lincoln counties. This year, Nelson again is a Democratic Party candidate for District 16.
In the complaint, Nelson and the Democratic leaders say having candidate order on the ballot by party gives more power to the party of the candidates listed first.
State Democratic Party Chairwoman Belinda Biafore praised Chambers’ ruling, calling it “well reasoned” and “thoroughly analyzed.”
“The court rightly acknowledged that Mac Warner was attempting to enforce an unconstitutional law that burdened the fundamental voting rights of West Virginia voters,” Biafore said. “With this decision, the court ensured that when voters cast their ballots in this year’s general election, their rights will not be unconstitutionally interfered with.”
State Republican Party Chairwoman Melody Potter chastised Democrats for now objecting to a law they enacted in 1991.
“This policy has been in state code for the past 29 years, without objection from either political party or any elected official,” Potter said. “Republican presidential candidates have won West Virginia every election since 2000, which positions them first on the ballot.
“Democrats had no problem with this policy from 2000 to 2010 when they held the majority. Now that President Donald J. Trump will be on the General Election ballot, they are trying to circumvent their legislation to give themselves an advantage. What hypocrisy.
“Unfortunately, left-wing radicals, including West Virginia Democratic Party Chairwoman Belinda Biafore, Kanawha County Democratic Executive Committee Chairman Elaine Harris, and the West Virginia Democratic House Legislative Committee, now object to the very law their party enacted 29 years ago claiming that it is now unconstitutional. They have sued because it's no longer politically advantageous for them.”
Potter called the Democrats’ lawsuit “a last-ditch effort to escape the General Election's inevitability.”
“Due to the increasingly out of touch policy and bad governance of the Democratic Party, Republican presidential candidates have won five of the last five elections in West Virginia,” Potter said. “This action is strikingly similar to the tone and tenor of their national party. The strategy is to change the rules they set in the first place. …
“West Virginia voters will see through this disingenuous charge and recognize it as a sham. West Virginia Democrats would do themselves well to do some introspection on how this law came to be in the first place.”
