Voting Access Under Attack

A bill (SB 565) that would limit access to early voting, gut automatic voter registration, and make it easier to remove voters from the registration rolls is picking up steam in the WV Legislature. The bill has already passed the Senate and is now before the House Judiciary Committee. 

The committee will hold a virtual public hearing Monday, April 5 at 8 AM (speakers had to pre-register). Please listen in if you can (go here for info on how to join remotely). Also, please contact members of House Judiciary and your delegate(s) and tell them to oppose these unnecessary changes to restrict West Virginians’ access to voting and vote NO on SB 565.   

After last year’s record-setting election, which had the highest early and absentee participation in state history, why is the Legislature taking away options that have served voters well?  

More specifically, SB 565 would:

• Eliminate the most popular days of early voting(the Friday and Saturday before Election Day) that have been available to voters for nearly 20 years. 
• Allow county clerks and the Secretary of State to start the process of removing purging you from the rolls after missing one election.
• Gut automatic voter registrationat the DMV before it has been implemented, even though AVR increases the accuracy of the rolls and reduces the costs of maintaining them. The WV Legislature passed AVR in 2016 with strong bipartisan support.

Dijon Stokes, Voting Rights Project Manager with the ACLU of WV, had a great op-ed on SB 565. You can read it here.

Voting rights are human rights, and West Virginia deserves better access to the ballot, not more hurdles.