2023 Legislative Session Report Cards

Thursday, March 30, 2023
contact [at] mountainpartywv.net

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The West Virginia Mountain Party has developed its first ever scoring system for the State Legislature. Report cards were made for each legislator based on legislation voted on during the regular 2023 legislative session. Our aim is to highlight the varying degree of failure that persists among individual legislators and across the entire State Capitol.

In order to demonstrate differences relative to our party’s legislative priorities, we used our party’s Ten Key Values as our guide for bill inclusion.

The Ten Key Values:

1. Grassroots Democracy 
2. Social Justice & Equal Opportunity 
3. Ecological Wisdom
4. Non-Violence
5. Decentralization 
6. Community-Based Economics
7. Feminism & Gender Equity
8. Respect for Diversity
9. Personal & Global Responsibility 
10. Future Focus & Sustainability 

Any bill for which legislators’ votes could demonstrate their commitment to the aforementioned principles were included. Committee votes, concurrence votes, effective from passage votes, and amendment votes were not considered for accuracy and consistency. All bills under consideration were weighed equally for scoring.

The following bills were utilized:

DATA

Legislative Report Card Scores By Order of Roster With Voting Record

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Legislative Report Card Grades From Highest To Lowest

RESULTS & GRADING

Scores ranged from as high as 69.97% (D+) belonging to Delegate Mike Pushkin (D) and as low as 19.61% (F) belonging to Bryan Ward (R). House Democrats (59.97%), House Republicans (30.08%), Senate Democrats (40.27%), and Senate Republicans (22.68%) each received an average failing grade for their caucus.

Absence from the Legislature may have issued some legislators an exaggerated grade.

It should be noted that one exception was made for HB 3018 in which Senator Mike Woelfel (D) voted against the marriage bill that establishes 18 as the age of consent on the grounds that it does not go far enough by still allowing an exception for 16 and 17 year olds to get married. Woelfel’s “Nay” vote was not counted against his score.

ANALYSIS & SUMMARY

Objectively, the West Virginia Democratic Party fails to be effective opposition to the far-right agenda of the West Virginia GOP. Even if Republicans did not have a supermajority, roughly half of the time Democrats would still vote along with the GOP. Without question, Democratic legislators are very conservative, despite voting better on average than their GOP colleagues. On average, Democrats in the 2023 regular session voted conservative ~60% in the Senate and ~40% in the House. 

It is clear, the “Lesser of Two Evils” in West Virginia proves to be a failure by not bringing any serious, effective opposition in the legislature. We The People are much better off voting for the policies and values we really want, than to vote in fear – because we unfortunately get the same failing outcomes by upholding the status quo. 

The two-party system does not work for the benefit of the working class people in West Virginia. The Mountain Party offers our platform as an alternative to the two-party dominance and mismanagement of our state.

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