MORGANTOWN – With a potential charter roadblock cleared by the West Virginia Legislature, Morgantown City Council is moving forward with the state-mandated realignment of its municipal election.
Morgantown City Council voted Tuesday to approve on first reading an ordinance amending the city charter to align the city election with the statewide May primary starting in 2030.
Morgantown’s elections are currently held on the last Tuesday in April each odd-numbered year.
And that’s when they’ll be held in 2027 and 2029. However, instead of being elected to four-year terms, council members will be elected to special three-year terms in order to line the city up with the primaries held in even-numbered years.
This is actually the second time the city has initiated this process, which became a requirement following the passage of Senate Bill 50 in 2025. That law mandates every municipal election in West Virginia be held in alignment with the statewide primary or general election by 2032.
The potential problem Morgantown originally contemplated is that changing the city election requires changing the city’s charter … and changing the city’s charter is a process Morgantown City Council cannot guarantee.
Historically, there are two routes to achieve a charter change – by ordinance or by election.
City council can change the charter by ordinance by voting to do so on two readings separated by a 30-day public comment period. However, if a single city resident files an objection to the change, council must either abandon the issue or place it before the city’s voters.
Council could also choose to bypass that process and place it directly on a city ballot.
Regardless of which route is selected, the question of whether or not a charter change is ultimately passed is largely out of its control.
The West Virginia Legislature addressed that uncertainty during the most recent regular session with passage of House Bill 5622, the language of which reads, in part, “a municipality may, for the limited purposes of achieving conformity with 3-1-31 and this section, amend or supersede any charter provision, ordinance, or other local enactment governing the municipal election day …”
The section of code referenced, 3-1-31, sets the dates and hours of the state’s primary and general elections.
Attorney Ryan Simonton said the city also considered public comment that asked the city to potentially coordinate the change with the upcoming census and the redistricting that follows.
He said waiting for the 2030 census would not give the city the runway needed to get the election transitioned to even-numbered years.
Further, Simonton said precinct boundaries do not, and will not, significantly impact city elections.
“There are nine precinct boundaries within Morgantown, but Morgantown holds an at-large election where every voter votes for every seat that is up for election each time. So, there’s not an issue where somebody who is voting in one ward might think they would go to the wrong polling place,” Simonton said. “In fact, once the change is made, everybody will just have one polling place they go to for every election.”
