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Tennant Calls For All Mail-In Ballots for General Election

Tennant

WHEELING — Former West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant says the state should call for an all vote-by-mail election for the November general election, and there is precedent for it being successful.

West Virginia residents have been mailed absentee ballot applications to participate in the state’s upcoming primary election, which was delayed until June 9 due to the coronavirus crisis.

Tennant is calling for an all mail-in election for the Nov. 3 general election, before which all registered voters automatically would be mailed a ballot. This would avoid the extra process of having voters submit a ballot application and overwhelming county clerks, she said.

Tennant, a Democrat, served two terms as secretary of state from 2009 to 2017. She is again running unopposed for the Democratic nomination to the office on the primary ballot, and would be a candidate on the general election ballot.

After leaving the Secretary of State’s Office, Tennant worked for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School focusing on voting rights.

“Vote by mail is sending to every registered voter a ballot,” she said. “What that does is cut out a step clerks would not have to worry about.”

Tennant said there is evidence vote-by-mail can work in West Virginia.

In 2011, she implemented a vote-by-mail pilot project in Morgantown and select smaller West Virginia communities where all registered voters received a ballot in their mailbox.

A local print shop was chosen as the vendor to print, sort and send the ballots. Included in the envelopes were the official ballot, a security envelope, a ballot return envelope, instructions for marking and signing the ballot, various notices and a list of how to return the ballot.

Once voters received their ballots, they had nearly three weeks — including until 8 p.m. on Election Day — to return the ballots. They had a choice in how to return it, either by mailing it to the city clerk’s office, hand-delivering it to the city clerk or dropping it off at one of three secure locations around Morgantown.

Results suggested voting by mail can improve voter turnout. In the vote-by-mail pilot project, the city of Morgantown mailed out more than 16,000 ballots to registered voters, and the number of voters who cast a ballot in the 2011 city election more than doubled that of the previous city election, according to Tennant.

Five states — Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Utah and Hawaii — mail ballots to all registered voters, and record some of the best voter turnouts in the nation.

West Virginia needs to prepare alternatives for the general election if there is still a threat of coronavirus spreading at the polls.

“We might have to use vote-by-mail again,” she said. “That’s why I’m pushing it now.”

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