West Virginians Reverse Past Trend of Election Year Complacency

State Journal, Nov. 11, 2004
by Beth Gorczyca

Nov. 2 was a historic day in West Virginia. …West Virginians reversed a trend they had followed for 40 years the trend of ignoring politics, of not voting, of not even registering to vote.

Consider this. According to unofficial results from the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office, nearly 1.17 million of the state’s 1.4 million residents of voting age registered. Never in the past 40 years has the number of registered voters been so high, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Last week’s election also marked one of the biggest turnouts of people voting age in 30 years - 762,000-plus ballots cast. Four years ago, 648,124 ballots were cast.

"The average person is beginning to see that unless they become engaged in the process then what they want to happen in the world isn’t going to happen," said Janet Fout, a co-director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and co-chair of the People’s Election Reform Coalition.

But why the switch now?

"It’s a combination of factors," Fout said. "…West Virginia, like a lot of states, saw a major effort to register new voters and then get as many of them casting ballots as they could. OVEC alone registered more than 1,000 new voters this year," Fout said. Other groups registered people, too.

Fout said she believes more people across the state are getting involved in every aspect of government. They are organizing. They are talking. They are listening.

That won’t end now that the election is over. At least she hopes not.

"If maybe the election didn’t go the way one person wanted, I hope they don’t walk away saying, ‘See, my vote doesn’t matter,’" she said. "Maybe I’m an optimist, but I think this election shows that even if the candidate you wanted didn’t win, you made a difference."

(Fout would like to) see the state adopt clean elections laws similar to those passed in Arizona and Maine that put limits on spending or force special-interest groups to fully identify themselves in both issue and candidate advertisements. Not having clean elections, she said, ends up hurting everyone.

"It’s not democracy when people can buy it," she said. "It’s not free speech when people pay for it. It’s baloney."