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Election season is here, and West Virginians will soon cast their ballots for a number of county, state and federal offices, as well as four proposed amendments to the state constitution.

Tuesday, Oct. 18, is the voter registration deadline in West Virginia to participate in the 2022 midterm elections. Early voting will take place from Oct. 26 to Nov. 5.

Heres what you need to know about voting in Monongalia County.

You can verify your voter registration status on the Secretary of States website by entering your full name and birthdate. From there, you can see your voter status, party affiliation, political district and polling location.

The deadline to register to vote in West Virginia is Tuesday, Oct. 18.

You can register online, by mail or in person by providing a valid ID and the last four digits of your Social Security number. Your county clerk should notify you once your application has been processed.

If you dont have a driver's license or access to your Social Security number, you can create a voter application online and deliver a signed copy to your county clerk by mail or in person.

If this is your first time registering to vote in the state, youll be required to show valid identification when registering and voting for this election. Heres a full list of acceptable IDs.

To qualify for voter registration in West Virginia, you must be a U.S. citizen and 18 years or older. You must also have a physical address in the state.

You cannot register to vote in the state if youve been convicted of a felony and are still serving a sentence, including probation or parole, or if youve been deemed mentally incapacitated by the court of law.

Heres more information on voter eligibility.

Yes, anyone in West Virginia can update their voter registration on the Secretary of State's website.

In-state students can change their voting district by providing a physical address, including college dorms and apartments.

Out-of-state students can register to vote in the state as well by providing a physical address and a valid ID. However, these students are strongly encouraged to cancel their out-of-state registration while voting in West Virginia, according to Donald Kersey, deputy legal counsel for the Secretary of State.

Although its not illegal to be registered to vote in two states, voting on two different ballots is a felony in West Virginia, according to the State Code.

In West Virginia, you can vote in person or by mail, though you must meet certain eligibility requirements.

If youre voting in person, you can confirm your polling location with the Secretary of State.

For absentee voting, you must fill out a ballot application and submit it to the county clerk at least six days before the election (Nov. 2, 2022).

Track your absentee ballot here.

A number of county, state and federal offices will be on the ballot in the November general election.

All West Virginians will vote for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, state delegates and state senators.

Offices in both the states House of Delegates and Senate are also up for grabs, with all previous position-holders running for re-election. Ballots will vary for voters based on districts and precincts.

Additionally, local elections for the Monongalia County Commission, Clerk and Circuit Clerk will also take place on Nov. 8. Both the candidate for the County Clerk and the County Circuit Clerk will run unopposed, whereas the race for the County Commission has two candidates, Democrat Bob Beach and Republican Sean Sikora.

You can look up a sample ballot on the Secretary of States website.

Voters will also be asked to weigh in on four different amendments to the states constitution, regarding tax, religion, education and impeachment.

Amendment 1: Judiciary Role in Impeachment

The first proposed amendment is aimed to clarify the Judiciarys role in impeachment proceedings and thereafter.

Currently, any state official, in either the House of Delegates or the Senate, may be impeached for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the neglect of duty, corruption or a high crime or misdemeanor. The House holds the power to impeach while the Senate is responsible for trying.

This amendment would assert that the Judiciary and its courts have no power to interfere or intervene with any impeachment proceeding of the House or Senate. The Judiciary is also prohibited from reviewing a judgment in the House or Senate regarding an impeachment.

Amendment 2: Property Tax

The proposed amendment on how much power the state should maintain over taxation tax may be the most controversial.

The second and most controversial amendment would permit the state to give tax cuts and exemptions for personal property taxes on tangible machinery, equipment and inventory used for business practices. It would also exempt the personal motor vehicle tax from ad valorem property taxes, which means that the tax is proportional to the value of the transaction or the property being taxed.

According to the West Virginia Center for Budget & Policy, the proposed amendment would give the legislature control over 27% of personal property taxes in the state.

Amendment 3: Incorporation of Churches

The third amendment discusses the incorporation of churches or religious denominations. This would allow for provisions to be made through general laws for securing, selling or transferring the title of a church property for purposes of the church or religious denominations.

Currently, West Virginia is the only state that prohibits any charter of incorporation to be granted to any church or religious denomination, as the provision was inherited from Virginias constitution when the state seceded. Allowing churches and religious denominations to incorporate would make it easier for them to borrow and manage money.

Amendment 4: Board Education

Lastly, the fourth amendment would clarify that any rule or policy enacted by the State Board of Education is subject to legislative review, approval, amendment or rejection. After the BOE creates a rule or policy, it must be submitted for review.

This means the state Legislature would give the final ruling over any proposed BOE rule or policy change.

See original here:
West Virginia midterm elections: What to know about voting in Mon County - The Daily Athenaeum - thedaonline

Former President Donald Trump is claiming the Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent investigations into his possible mishandling of classified documents a "hoax." He also thinks other presidents should be under investigation.

At a rally in Nevada on Saturday, Trump claimed that former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Barack Obama were all much worse than him about retaining documents.

He said those presidents were given "all the time they needed" when it came to their documents -- something he claims he was not afforded.

"Just look at how every other president has been treated when they left office. Very interesting," Trump said, according to Mediaite. "They've been given all the time, all the time needed, because you're supposed to have as much time as you need, and complete deference when it came to their documents and their papers."

The former president then went on to single out Obama.

"Barack Hussein Obama moved more than 20 truckloads, over 33 million pages of documents, both classified and unclassified, to a poorly built and totally unsafe former furniture store located in a rather bad neighborhood in Chicago. With no security, by the way," he said.

Trump also took aim at George W. Bush, saying he stored "68 million pages in a warehouse in Texas and lost 22 million White House emails." He said Bill Clinton took "millions of documents from the White House to a former car dealership in Arkansas...and kept classified recordings in his sock drawer."

Trump also mentioned Hillary Clinton deleting "33,000 emails under congressional subpoena," and George H.W. Bush taking "millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant... with no security and a broken front door."

"When will they investigate and prosecute Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, and look into what took place with George Bush's father, a very nice man," he asked rhetorically. "Are they under potential prosecution? I don't think so. I don't think they are."

"They should give me back everything that they've taken, he added.

Trump said in contrast, he only had a "small number of boxes in storage at Mar-a-Lago" which were guarded by the Secret Service.

"The FBI with many, many people raided my house. It's in violation, by the way, of the Fourth Amendment, and many other things also," he said. "There is no crime... but they make it sound like the greatest crime in America was committed. And we've got all these warehouses that are just falling down buildings essentially, loaded up with just millions and millions of pages of previous presidents and nothing was ever said about it."

Excerpt from:
Trump wants other presidents investigated - KRLD

Former President Donald Trump's comments at a Nevada rally on Saturday night indicate that he is "guilty," according to one former federal prosecutor.

Making the rounds ahead of the hotly contested midterm elections, Trump spoke at a rally in Minden, Nevada, to help support GOP Senate candidate, Adam Laxalt, and gubernatorial candidate, Joe Lombardo. He discussed numerous things during his speech, notably insisting that investigations should be launched into numerous other former presidents, and Hillary Clinton, for allegedly mishandling documents themselves.

During his speech, Trump made claims about how the late former President George H.W. Bush handled documents after leaving the White House, which were highlighted in a tweet from Howard Mortman, C-SPAN's communications director.

"George H.W. Bush took millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant where they combined them," Trump said. "So they're in a bowling alley slash Chinese restaurant...By contrast, I had a small number of boxes and storage at Mar-A-Lagovery small, relativelyguarded by the great Secret Service. And yet the FBI, with many people, raided my house. It's in violation, by the way, of the Fourth Amendment, and many other things also."

Mortman's tweet was shared by Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor and outspoken critic of the former president, who offered her own take on Trump's claims, based on her own legal experience.

"In my experience as a prosecutor, people say stuff like this when they're guilty & scared," she said.

In early August, Trump's Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago was searched by FBI agents as part of an investigation into the former president's alleged hiding of sensitive, top-secret documents taken after he left the White House last year. The search ultimately yielded numerous boxes full of such material, with agents saying that they were not securely stored. Recent reports also indicate that the Department of Justice (DOJ) believes Trump may be hiding yet more documents.

The former president has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in regard to the documents, and said that any classified documents that he took from the White House when he left last year had been declassified.

During his speech, Trump alleged that other former presidents did not face any investigations for the documents they took from the White House, citing Barack Obama and George W. Bush as more examples.

"Barack Hussein Obama moved more than 20 truckloads, over 33 million pages of documents, both classified and unclassified, to a poorly built and unsafe former furniture store located in a bad neighborhood in Chicago," Trump said. "With no security, by the way."

Trump's specific claim about Obama's documents has not held up to scrutiny, with fact-checking investigations finding that none of the documents were classified and that they were transferred to the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in 2017. Outgoing presidents also routinely request non-classified documents from their time in office, for inclusion in future presidential libraries.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office for comment.

Go here to see the original:
Trump Rally Speech Shows He's 'Guilty and Scared': Former Prosecutor - Newsweek

By Bob Hilliard mtrevino@cherryroad.com

Be very careful what you wish for regarding amendments. They can appear ideal and appeal to our desperation, but in reality, mean exactly the opposite. I will illustrate some of those in a later Minute.

You might be shocked.

As we previously said, statecraft is serious business.

Are amendments effective? Lets take just a few examples.

We have federal laws on prayer in public. The First Amendment did not prevent that.

We have federal laws on guns, ammo, and firearm manufacturers.

The Second Amendment did not prevent that.

Our God-given privacy rights have been tossed aside by the federal government.

The Fourth Amendment did not prevent that.

We have federal laws on minimum wage, where to drill or not drill for oil, air bags in cars, and hundreds of other objects.

The Tenth Amendment did not prevent that.

Still think amendments are a good idea? When amendments correct defects in the Constitution, they are clearly a good thing.

The 12th and 13th Amendments, like the 11th Amendment, corrected defects in the Constitution. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment extended Citizenship to the freed slaves and provided constitutional authority for the much needed federal Civil Rights Act of 1866.

In Federalist No. 84 (10th para), Alexander Hamilton warned against adding a Bill of Rights to our Constitution. Under a Constitution of enumerated powers, the government may lawfully do only what the Constitution permits it to do. So why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power

And he was right!!

Why say Congress shall not infringe (2nd Amendment) when there was no power in the Constitution for the federal government to infringe to begin with?

Same holds true for the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 10th Amendments. Can you find others?

See the rest here:
The very idea of amendments Part 2 of 3 Alice Echo News Journal - Alice Echo News-Journal

The courts conservative justices followed a similar course last term in other cases. In Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, the court considered whether recipients of federal funds that discriminate against individuals because of their race, sex or disability must pay damages for any resulting emotional distress. The framework the court established 20 years ago strongly suggested the answer was yes. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, however, supplied the pivotal votes against the plaintiff on the ground that that framework itself was faulty and thus should never be extended. And in Vega v. Tekoh, Kavanaugh took the same approach to the courts well-known Miranda rule the rule requiring police officers to warn suspects in custody before questioning them. He encapsulated his approach to Miranda during the cases oral arguments as follows: Accept it, but dont extend it.

Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, left, and Brett Kavanaugh pictured at the Capitol in Washington.|Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool

This approach is as problematic as it is pithy. In the guise of respecting precedent, the new tactic of barricading precedent actually thwarts it.

We need not look back very far to understand why that is so. During oral argument five years ago in another case involving whether federal officers could be held liable for violating the Fourth Amendment this time for shooting an innocent child just across the U.S.-Mexico border Justice Stephen Breyer explained to the plaintiffs lawyer that the court could not just pronounce which side wins. We [have to] write some words in an opinion, Breyer stressed, establishing a legal rule that will affect other cases too. Justice Samuel Alito underscored the point: We cant just say that on the particular facts here, one party wins. We have to have a rule that can be applied in other cases.

In other words, Supreme Court decisions create legal precedent that necessarily extends beyond particular cases. While lawmakers enacting a statute can effectively pronounce this much and no more perhaps due to horse-trading, political compromise or sheer limits of will the concept of stare decisis requires the court in future cases to extend or distinguish past decisions a principled manner.

Or so we thought. At least some in the courts newly constituted majority seem to have a different conception of the judicial role one which allows them simply to refuse to apply past decisions they do not like.

In fact, we can see from this vantage point one way in which the courts decision overruling Roe was actually doubly disrespectful of stare decisis. Those defending the right to abortion (of whom I was one) argued that the courts prior decisions guaranteeing same-sex couples the right to engage in intimate relations and to marry supported an individual right to obtain an abortion. The conservative majority responded in two ways. It first insisted that it accepted those prior decisions. But, without explaining how they could be harmonized with the originalist legal framework that the court said required Roes reversal, the majority also refused to apply those precedents. In short, the court barricaded off its gay rights decisions.

On one level, many surely welcomed the courts announcement that it intends to preserve those important decisions. But this declaration also seems to confirm that the court is now comfortable deciding cases on the basis of pure power or will, not just traditional judicial reasoning.

That is cause for great concern. A core feature of the rule of law is that judicial decisions must be worth more than their resolutions of specific controversies in the past. Otherwise, the value of precedent threatens to become nothing more than the degree to which the current members of the court thinks a prior decision is correct in other words, a system, to invert John Adams famous phrase, of men, not laws.

The rest is here:
Opinion | The Other Way the Supreme Court is Nullifying Precedent - POLITICO