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The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia has filed a legal action to rectify the disenfranchisement of hundreds of Mingo County voters, the ACLU announced Tuesday.
In a Writ of Mandamus filed on Election Day in Mingo County Circuit Court, ACLU-WV is representing a voter seeking a court order requiring the Mingo County Clerk to correct a prior error and hold a fair election for the state Senate’s Sixth District.
For the first several days of early voting, voters were given ballots with the wrong name of the Democratic candidate for the district. Democrat Jeff Disibbio was left off the ballot, which instead listed Randy Fowler, who was ruled ineligible after he won the May primary.
This resulted in nearly 700 people casting votes using an incorrect ballot. Officials then told voters who were given an erroneous ballot that they could cast a revised vote on a provisional ballot. However, state election officials have made clear this is not a proper remedy, the release states.
The ACLU said in the release that it is impossible for the provisional ballots to be counted, because the ballots already cast are confidential. Therefore, there would be no way to know which ballots should be canceled out in favor of the new provisional ballot.
This will unfairly disadvantage Disibbio because votes that may have been intended for him will not be counted, while votes for his opponent will count, the release states.
However, “this isn’t a partisan issue, this is an issue of ballot integrity,” ACLU-WV staff attorney Nick Ward said. “Now more than ever we need to 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. That right is fundamental to our democracy.”
“Races have been decided on far fewer than 700 votes,” Ward continued. “In a democracy, the voters choose their leaders, not the other way around. That’s why we’re asking the Court to order that the Mingo County Clerk do whatever it takes to make this right, and make sure every eligible West Virginian in their community can meaningfully exercise their right to vote.”
This isn’t the first ballot error this year in Mingo County. In May, about 200 Democrats were also found to have incorrectly voted in the Republican primary for the same district.
