Trending
CHARLESTON -- Members of a House of Delegates committee sent a bill to a subcommittee Tuesday that could tie the hands of future elections officials if another pandemic hits during an election season.
The House Judiciary Committee sent House Bill 4293 to a subcommittee after discussing the bill Tuesday morning.
HB 4293 would prohibit individuals and county and state elections officials from mailing absentee ballot applications to any voter who did not request an application. The bill would make sending an unsolicited absentee ballot application a felony, impose a fine of a minimum of $5,000 and a sentence to prison for at least one year.
During primary and general elections, voters request absentee ballots from county clerks. The Secretary of State's Office also makes the absentee ballot application available for download on its GoVoteWV.com website.
To be eligible for an absentee ballot in West Virginia, a voter must have a valid medical reason (including being quarantined for COVID-19), have a disability or be of advanced age, be incarcerated or on home detention for non-felony convictions, work far away from the voter's home county, have no access to an early voting site or polling place, traveling for business or pleasure, attendance at a college or job training, residing temporarily outside their county or serving as an appointed or elected federal official.
Deak Kersey, general counsel for the Secretary of State's Office, said the bill would help with a problem county and state election officials dealt with during the 2020 general election and previous elections.
"It does bring uniformity to the problem we saw in the general election of 2020," Kersey said. "Prior to that, we've seen what I'd call unequal mailing of absentee ballot applications in certain areas or by certain political parties or certain candidates."
Kersey said unsolicited absentee ballot applications sent to voters who are not eligible created confusion with voters and more headaches for county clerks and state elections officials.
"Voters do get concerned when they receive an application when they're not eligible," Kersey said. "They call and ask 'am I eligible?' Or perhaps they submit the application to the county clerk, and the clerk says 'this is my neighbor here, I know she's not eligible for absentee. What do I do with it?' And the neighbor says 'I got it in the mail and I thought I was eligible.' Then we have to go through the process and explain the legalities of who is eligible to vote absentee. This does help us administratively on that standpoint."
But Democratic committee members raised concerns about whether the bill would ensnare people acting on behalf of a voter eligible for an absentee ballot.
"This doesn't just apply to election officials; it applies to any person," said Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha. "Let's say somebody in my family … is getting older and they can say 'get me an application' and they gave it verbally … if (the request) is not in writing, I could be found guilty of a felony that I didn't even do."
"If I wanted to do that, I guess I'd better keep a release on me to have them sign if they requested it I guess," said Delegate Lisa Zukoff, D-Marshall.
"If someone running for office has this public document and they're going door-to-door to cause this public document to be delivered to a voter without their request, would they be guilty of a felony," asked House Minority Whip Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio.
"Yes," said Brian Casto, counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.
"It's misdemeanor battery if someone gets punched in the face versus someone delivering a public application? Absurd," Fluharty said.
After Gov. Jim Justice issued a state of emergency in March 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Secretary of State Mac Warner announced an emergency rule that same month allowing voters to claim concern about the coronavirus pandemic as a valid medical excuse to request an absentee ballot.
On April 1, 2020, Justice signed an executive order moving the 2020 primary election from May 12, 2020, to June 9, 2020, along with the dates for early voting. The Secretary of State's Office mailed every registered voter in the state an application to request an absentee ballot for the primary election.
According to data released by the Secretary of State's Office after the June 2020 primary, nearly half of the 450,909 ballots cast were absentee ballots, with 224,777 absentee ballots cast by voters. A total of 262,503 West Virginians out of 1.2 million registered voters requested absentee ballots, with 37,726 absentee ballots outstanding.
Sending absentee ballot applications to every registered voter for the 2020 primary cost approximately $900,000 with only 22 percent of registered voters filling out the applications. For the 2020 general election, voters could still cite COVID-19 as a valid medical excuse to request an absentee ballot, but applications were not mailed out to all voters.
Last year, former Pendleton County mail carrier Thomas Cooper was sentenced by a federal judge to five years of probation for election fraud during the 2020 primary after he admitted to changing the party registration on five absentee ballot request applications from Democrat to Republican and other alterations.
(Adams can be contacted at sadams@newsandsentinel.com)