Widmyer

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Last Thursday evening, the League of Women Voters of West Virginia (LWVWV) held an informational meeting via Zoom on its new Legislative Scorecard, which tracked the votes of West Virginia state senators and delegates on legislation that became law from the 2023 regular session.

The Legislative Scorecard was designed to offer voters easy-to-use information on how their legislators voted on bills prioritized by LWVWV, according to LWVWV Vice President Lyn Widmyer, of Charles Town.

“Every legislative session, a couple thousand bills are introduced. The 2023 legislature resulted in 333 bills becoming law. No voter has the willingness or the ability to go through all 333 bills that became law, so we did it for you!” said League Legislative Action Workgroup (LLAW) Chair Judy Ball. “Out of those 333 bills, we selected 25 — a manageable number — that we could categorize and report out.”

Ball noted that, since LWVWV is a nonpartisan organization, the Legislative Scorecard was made, irrespective of which political party was behind the selected bills in the West Virginia Legislature.

“We didn’t pay any attention to who sponsored the bill, who voted for or against them. That was not the issue. We started with the substance of the bills!” Ball said.

Ball

According to Ball, the past year’s most noteworthy passed legislation was intended to be separated into the LWVWV’s four policy priority categories: strengthening democracy by making voting easier, safeguarding equal rights, protecting children and families, and creating a sustainable future. However, one of those categories failed to be recognized in any of the year’s legislation, according to the scorecard.

“We found no bills out of the 333 that were consequential enough to represent strengthening democracy. We are aware that some of the bills would have worked against democracy — they didn’t become law, and we’re glad for that. But not a single bill passed that would have strengthened democracy,” Ball said. “We wouldn’t have known that, necessarily, if we hadn’t gone through this process.”

Ball and Widmyer agreed that this was proof of the need for a Legislative Scorecard to continue being made every year, as a kind of accountability marker. Another noteworthy realization from the scorecard’s findings, was that legislators proved to be inconsistent in their voting practices.

“We also found a tremendous amount of variation in how legislators voted in certain categories,” Ball said. “So, even if you don’t agree with the League, the content of the scorecard can be useful for you.”

LWVWV President Julie Archer worked alongside Ball to comb through the legislation from the 2023 regular session. She encouraged voters, no matter which side of the political spectrum they fell on, to look up the scorecard at https://lwvwv.org/scorecard-overview/.

Archer

“This scorecard offers a new way for voters to know whether their legislators are being responsive to their interests,” Archer said. “LWVWV wants voters to be well informed. It is part of our mission to serve voters in a nonpartisan way.”