Tending to Our Democracy

It is said in some circles that this country was founded as a republic, not as a democracy. From that, they ask why we should be so concerned about how well democracy is functioning? Our Founding Fathers were indeed a group of wealthy white men who were worried about an excess of democracy in government, which they equated with mob rule. Their writings reveal a strong concern about preserving property, including slaves, from expropriation by the broad class of less fortunate citizens. Their solution was a republic that did not allow for direct election by the people of the President, Vice President or U.S. Senators.

Vestiges of this still operate two hundred fifty years later. Although their names don’t appear on the ballot, you are really voting for electors appointed by your candidate’s political party when you cast your vote for President. The original theory behind this was that wise electors could step in to choose an appropriate President if a tyrant is elected by the people. While it is still possible for an elector in many states to vote for a different candidate than the one popularly elected, this is exceedingly rare.

But since 1789, we have moved strongly toward democracy as our organizing principle. Property requirements for voting were eliminated before the Civil War. The Seventeenth Amendment established direct election of U.S. Senators in 1913. And in West Virginia, we are in love with direct democracy. We vote directly for the Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Treasurer, Auditor, Secretary of Agriculture, all Delegates and Senators in the legislature, and even Supreme Court justices. While our framework is republican, our practice is fully democratic. So we should have a compelling interest in strengthening that democracy.

A healthy democracy has several components, among which are courts governed by the rule of law, a free press, and a vigorous civil society. But most would agree that the key to a healthy democracy is voting – who gets to vote and in what manner. No provision of the U.S. Constitution explicitly guarantees the right to vote for everyone. Who votes and how we vote is mostly driven by state law, although federal law imposes some basic principles on the states.

The political struggle over voting comes down to whether voting should be made easy for, and extended to, the broadest number of citizens, or whether we are more concerned with the integrity of elections. A cynic might say that how you come down on the relative importance of these things depends on whether your political party would benefit.

The cynical view might be correct, at least for supporters of the electoral integrity position. Our national story has been about the ever-increasing circle of people accepted into political participation. People of color and women are the prime examples. This national story has been supported and celebrated by both political parties. Recall that it was the Republican Party that produced the great post-Civil War Amendments, including Amendment XV, prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on account of race.

But the election integrity argument is a new phenomenon, not appearing on the national scene until Donald Trump’s false claim that he was cheated out of victory in the 2020 election. He has railed about the alleged cheating by Democrats in large cities like Philadelphia and Atlanta, without proof. He has complained about electronic voting machines and voting by mail. Right away, the Republican Party echoed these positions.

Reduced to its essence, this argument is that the government should spare no effort to prevent the tiny number of ineligible people who attempt to vote, regardless of the collateral effects on eligible voters. Election integrity measures tend to restrict who can vote and make the circumstances of voting more difficult. It is hard not to notice that those most heavily affected are the demographic groups that historically vote for the Democratic Party.

Voter Eligibility

On the issue of who should be eligible to vote, one party would vastly restrict the pool of eligible voters while the other would increase it.

A Republican Delegate has proposed HB 5037 that would restrict the definition of “voter” under West Virginia law to a “natural born citizen of the United States,” thereby disenfranchising all those citizens born in other countries who wave little American flags at emotional naturalization ceremonies.  A Democratic Delegate has introduced HB 5117 that would restore the right to vote to convicted felons who have completed their period of incarceration, even during probation or supervised release.

Voter ID

Voter impersonation fraud is virtually nonexistent in the United States. Nevertheless, the Republican-led West Virginia legislature passed a law in 2025 requiring a photo ID to vote. This replaced a 2018 law that required an ID, but not a photo ID. Strict voter ID laws complicate the voting process, intimidate some potential voters, and reduce the number of poor and less-educated voters. Strict voter ID laws are chasing a problem that doesn’t exist and discourage voter participation as a side effect.

Absentee Voting

In West Virginia, voters who cannot appear at the polls in person for various reasons are allowed to request an absentee ballot and mail it in. One reason that qualifies a voter for an absentee ballot is “physical disability or immobility due to extreme advanced age.” A proposed bill introduced by a Democratic legislator would substitute “any voter who has attained the age of 65,” thus sparing the aged from having to prove disability or immobility.

An absentee ballot must be postmarked on or before election day, but can be counted if received up to the date of canvassing. President Trump’s most recent position on mail-in ballots of any kind is decidedly negative:

Mail-In ballots are corrupt. Mail-In ballots. You can never have a real democracy with Mail-In ballots. And we as a Republican Party are going to do everything possible that we get rid of Mail-In ballots.

Responding to these sentiments, Republicans in the legislature have introduced bills that would restrict the scope of absentee voting. HB 4600, which has passed the House, would require absentee ballots to be mailed early enough to be received by 8:00 p.m. on election day. That means these voters would be required to vote before election day, losing the privilege enjoyed by all other voters to consider their vote up until that day.

Conclusion

West Virginia voter turnout is abysmal, and we should be tending to our democracy by adopting policies that improve it. Election integrity is a worthy goal, but according to our Secretary of State, West Virginia elections are clean. Any way you look at it, election integrity should be subordinate to strengthening our voting democracy. We can’t allow election integrity to be the tail that wags the dog.