MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Moving Morgantown city elections from April to May, attaching them to the County’s election day, and doing it as part of a change to the City Charter would save the City of Morgantown money, according to County Clerk Carye Blaney.
She was unsure of the exact cost of an election in Morgantown, but Blaney said the County has the ability to absorb the cost.
“It would be an actual cost savings because that would be thirty or forty or fifty thousand dollars that the city could put toward another use for the citizens of Morgantown,” she said Friday on WAJR’s Morgantown AM.
The discussion came up last week when Council began discussing the possibility of changing their election process — increasing term lengths from two to four years and staggering the election of council members. That discussion also seemed to include a cursory nod towards moving Election Day, traditionally held in April, to allow for higher turnout numbers. But in an interview on Morgantown AM, Mayor Jenny Selin said Council was less interested in that aspect of change — saying they would prefer to hold the election when the largest number of people are actually in Morgantown.
Blaney said the county’s use of digital technology would make any cost associated with changing how the City conducts election, quite literally, obsolete.
“To add an additional race to our already existing ballot is negligible because of the digital technology,” Blaney said. “The only cost that I can perceive additional to the county would be the extra column inches in the newspaper that it would cost us to print a little bit larger ballot. That cost would also be minimal, and we would not charge anything back to any municipality that would come onto our ballot.”
The discussion was prompted by what continues to be low voter turnout during April elections for City Council. Blaney said she has spoken with members of Morgantown City Council on the issue.
“I told (Mayor Bill Kawecki) at the time that the County was not looking to charge the City at all for that Election Day,” she said. “We could just take the money issue off the table, but the City had to take the steps to change the Charter.”
Not much would change, though some things would. Candidates would still file in the same place before the election and voters would still choose by ward. The only place where ballots for Council would be available would be in the precincts tied to the seven wards of Morgantown.