Originally published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail on 11/14/2022
West Virginians hold many values that form the core of a strong cultural identity. Because these values are part of us, they are difficult to bargain away or trade when they conflict with one another, even in the same individual. To advance one value, we may have to compromise on another, compromising, seemingly, ourselves to advance our ideals.
This can be the case with our elections. As a society, we value security – the idea that only those with the right to vote should cast a ballot and that nothing, and no one, should interfere with their ability to support the candidates they prefer. We value efficiency. Our systems should allow officials to count our votes quickly and accurately. we also value access. The idea that people who have the right to vote should be able to register, gather the information they need to cast an informed vote and be able to participate in the election unimpeded.
These values are difficult to reconcile within ourselves and even more difficult to discuss openly with fellow citizens.
With support from the National Endowment for Humanities, West Virginia Humanities Council, Glenville State University, West Virginia Wesleyan College and West Virginia University, we inaugurated Election Integrity in the Mountain State. Our public forums brought citizens together to relate and explain the values we share and why they are important. Our goal was simple: to create a forum to share our values and understand one another better without pressure to change minds.
We have been asking people about their priorities for security, efficiency and access in the design of elections. In these events, we set partisan discussions aside, and participants avoided justifying their preferences based on how it helps or hurts their preferred party. Our conversations increased knowledge and changed some priorities about elections among our participants. Most importantly, we learned why our fellow West Virginians might prioritize certain values related to elections differently than we do.
Even when we can find a balance among values, there are trade-offs. To enhance security, for example, we might have to limit some forms of access. West Virginia’s rules on voter identification illustrate this trade-off. While voter impersonation is extremely rare, voter identification rules protect against this type of fraud. But adding identification requirements creates risks that voters won’t have (or may forget) identification on Election Day. In West Virginia, the range of acceptable IDs is quire wide – from driver’s licenses to utility bills – to reduce the likelihood that an eligible voter is prevented from casting a standard ballot. West Virginia’s rules on identification strike a nice balance among security, efficiency and access to enhance people’s confidence in the integrity of the vote.
While we can strike these necessary compromises, we don’t always discuss elections from a foundation of facts fused with a value-based perspective. Instead, we often focus on whether our party wins or loses, undermining confidence in our elections and threatening the foundation of our republic. We have seen, however, how focusing on values leads to a more fruitful, confidence-building approach to discussing election policies and reforms. And in our experience, citizens are more than capable of weighing the tradeoffs of security, efficiency and access.
Democracy is a fragile endeavor that requires all citizens to reflect on what they value most, listen to their neighbors to understand where their values intersect, and act on those values by respectfully advocating for a system that balances the priorities of all citizens. In our tour around the state, it was striking the degree to which students, community leaders, and the broader public were able to reason through these values, understand each other (even in disagreement), and engage in a policy-focused discussion of elections and reform.
Following another contentious election season, we need to have more – not fewer – of these conversations. We should talk with our neighbors and understand what they value and why. We won’t always agree, but we will emerge with a better understanding of our communities and more faith in each other.
Erik Herron is the Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Political Science at West Virginia University. Samuel Workman is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at WVU.
Election Integrity in the Mountain State 