July 7, 2020

Local Tribunal Attempts to Disenfranchise Citizens to Keep Town Council Positions

A closely contested municipal election for five seats on the Harpers Ferry Town Council in West Virginia highlights the small margins with which some elections are decided, particularly local elections. It also shows how just a small amount of fraud, or — as in this case — administrative errors, can be a deciding factor in the outcome.

Editor’s note: This piece was coauthored by Kaitlynn Samalis-Aldrich.

A closely contested municipal election for five seats on the Harpers Ferry Town Council in West Virginia highlights the small margins with which some elections are decided, particularly local elections. It also shows how just a small amount of fraud, or — as in this case — administrative errors, can be a deciding factor in the outcome.

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, the state’s highest court, threw out the decision of the local town tribunal that decided to not count four provisional ballots cast by eligible voters.

Let’s quickly go over the facts.

The Harpers Ferry 2019 municipal election was held on June 11, 2019. Nine candidates were running for five spots on the town council.

The five top vote-getters who were elected to the town council were: Barbara Humes (91 votes), Jay Premack (87 votes), Hardwick Johnson (85 votes), Christian Pechuekonis (84 votes), and Charlotte Thompson (84 votes).

But three other candidate were right behind these five candidates who were elected: Nancy Singleton Case (82 votes), Deborah McGee (81 votes), and Marjorie Flynn Yost (also with 81 votes).

Case and McGee requested a recount. However, the recount did not consider any of the provisional ballots that were cast in the election. Provisional ballots are those that are cast by individuals who show up at a polling place but a question is raised about their eligibility to vote, such as when the person is not listed as a registered voter.

Federal law requires election officials to provide people in this category with a provisional ballot, which is kept separate from all other ballots. Election officials must then investigate the circumstances of all such provisional voters after Election Day. If the subsequent investigation determines that the voter should have been registered but was not due to an administrative error by a government official, the provisional ballots must be counted.

On June 29, 2019, the five newly elected town council members were sworn into their new position. But then, Case and McGee contested the recount and the election results, alleging that four eligible voters “were denied the right to vote based upon erroneous records that indicated that they did not reside in Harpers Ferry.”

These four individuals — Linda McCarty, George McCarty, Adam Hutton, and Leah Howell — all voted by provisional ballot on election day.

How did these people get left off the voter registration rolls if they live in Harpers Ferry? It turns out they were all victims of bureaucratic screw-ups:

  • When they registered to vote at the state Department of Motor Vehicles office, Linda and George McCarthy were told by the department that its system showed their address as West Washington Street, not Washington Street where they actually lived, so they needed to list their voter registration address as West Washington Street.

  • Adam Hutton unknowingly used the incorrect address of 900 West Washington Street to register to vote since the U.S. Postal Service assigned him that address for the purposes of mail delivery despite the fact that he lives on Washington Street.

  • Leah Howell, who also lives on Washington Street, did not testify, so it is unclear why she was left off the Harpers Ferry voter rolls.

This led to Jefferson County chief deputy clerk of elections, Nikki Painter, mistakenly listing those voters as living in the neighboring town of Bolivar rather than Harpers Ferry, because Washington Street runs through the two towns, but West Washington Street is in Bolivar.

Yet Painter stated to the tribunal that “all four provisional voters do in fact live in Harpers Ferry, and they should have been listed in the Harpers Ferry poll book.” This was clearly a clerical error and it should have been an open-and-shut case. Since these four residents live in Harpers Ferry, their provisional ballots should have been counted.

But that’s not what happened due to a glaring conflict of interest.

Under West Virginia law, “the governing body of the municipality is the judge of any contest of a municipal election.” In Harpers Ferry, that’s the town council. The tribunal consisted of the mayor, the town recorder, and the members of the council who had just been sworn in: Humes, Johnson, Thompson, and Premack.

Only one of the newly elected council members, Pechuekonis, did the right thing and recused himself from hearing the case.

This was a particular problem since both Johnson and Thompson won their races within the four-vote margin of provisional ballots, separating them from the two candidates contesting the election.

When Case and McGee objected to Johnson and Thompson serving on the tribunal, they were told the tribunal “ha[d] no legal authority to compel any one or more of its members to disqualify themselves.” So Case and McGee had their election contest heard and decided by the same people whose election was in question.

This calls to mind James Madison’s sage advice in Federalist 10 that “[n]o man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgement, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.”

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia overturned the election, holding that Thompson and Johnson’s actions in refusing to recuse themselves “ran afoul of common sense, logic, statutory law, and the West Virginia Ethics Code governing elected officials.”

These voters were disenfranchised due to a clerical error that stemmed from administrative problems inside the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the U.S. Postal Service, a service that many people want to give even more authority over the administration of our elections.

The mistakes were obviously unintentional, but the mistakes combined with the deliberate actions of a town council resulted in the disenfranchisement of four citizens of Harpers Ferry.

Thankfully, an injustice was rectified, and these four provisional ballots will be counted.

Regardless of whether the ultimate outcome is affected by those four ballots, as this case clearly demonstrates, local elections (and sometimes state or national ones, too) can be decided by a few votes, illustrating once again that every (legitimate) vote counts.


Republished from The Heritage Foundation.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.