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Sanders' Message from McDowell on Poverty: Stand Together

Bernie Sanders made stops throughout West Virginia Thursday. He started the day with a round table discussion in McDowell County, at a food bank.Sanders…

Bernie Sanders made stops throughout West Virginia Thursday. He started the day with a round table discussion in McDowell County, at a food bank.

Sanders chose Five Loaves And Two Fishes Food Bank for his campaign stop – a food pantry in the poorest county of West Virginia, one of the poorest counties in the country. The senator began his visit by saying that he wasn’t here to rally, but to talk about poverty.

“Physiology of poverty is the stress that your body deals with every day when you worry about whether the lights stay on or if you have enough money to put gas in the car to get to work,” sanders said, “and if you can’t put gas in the car you lose your job. And what happens when you lose your job to the rest of your life?”

“People are on the edge every single day,” Sanders continued. “People who have money don’t understand what that is about. When you don’t have money and you are fighting for survival every day, that takes a huge toll on your health.”

Stacks of food were moved aside to make room for over 250 people from around the area who attended the event. Organizers from Five Fishes & Two Loaves told the crowd that the pantry fed half the population of the county last year, 11,000 people.

It isn’t the first time Sanders has been to southern West Virginia. He came three years ago on a visit with native Sabrina Shrader who had been to Washington, D.C., to testify before Congress about growing up in impoverished conditions.

Shrader, who is now running for House of Delegates, sat on a small stage next to Sanders along with other panelists, including attorney Sam Petsonk, and an elementary school teacher Tonya Spinella. Topics discussed over the hour and a half visit covered everything from crime, addiction and health care to economics.

“You’re not going to get a handle on the crime problem unless you get a handle on the drug problem,” Sanders said. “You’re not going to get a handle on the drug problem – I think – unless we deal with some economic issues and unless we deal with the despair and the hopelessness that people are feeling.”

Sanders called for stories of struggle and solutions from the audience, and when pressed for some of his own solutions, he said people will have to stand together just as they have had to in the past.

“That’s the way change in America always takes place,” he said. “It’s is the history of the history of the United Coal Miners Workers Union, the Civil Rights Movement – whatever movements there are, people come together, fight back and say that the status quo is not acceptable. And I think that’s the moment we’re in right now.”

Sanders moved on from McDowell County Thursday to large rallies in Charleston, and then to Morgantown.

Walker Says She'll be a Conservative Justice for W.Va.

Beth Walker is running for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.

The name may be familiar to you, maybe because of her unsuccessful bid for the high court in 2008, or maybe because of her legal challenge to opponents Brent Benjamin and Bill Wooten’s use of public campaign financing in the race, but now, Walker is traveling the state to make sure voters recognize her for her conservative values.

“I don’t have other political aspirations. I don’t hope to run for Justice and then run for something else in the future, I just want to be a good judge,” Walker said in a 2008 interview.

In addition to being a good judge, Walker said in the interview she wanted to help rebuild the reputation of West Virginia’s highest court, the Supreme Court of Appeals. Those were the two main reasons she ran to be a justice then and eight years later, those are the reasons she’s trying her hand at a seat once again.

“I have a conservative vision for our Supreme Court of Appeals and that means very simply that the court has to be fair and impartial and decide cases based on the law,” Walker said, “not based on who the parties are, not based on where you are from, not based on an individual Justice’s personal preference, but rather based purely on the law.”

Walker is from Ohio, but has spent nearly 30 years in West Virginia, the past 6 working as in-house counsel for the West Virginia University Hospital system.

Now, she’s traveling the state, meeting with voters and sharing her ideas.

“If you have an activist judge on the court who thinks it’s their place to second guess what the Legislature does, then I don’t think that’s good for West Virginia,” Walker told about a dozen women at a ‘Women for Walker’ event at Giuseppe’s Italian Restaurant in Mt. Hope.

This idea, that Justices shouldn’t legislate from the bench, is one Walker discusses a lot. She shared that message with the women at her luncheon, in that 2008 interview, and in one of her recent television ads.

But Walker hasn’t shied away from sharing her opinions about legislation either. Like her stances on substance abuse. Walker says the state needs increased access to treatment and stricter penalties for drug dealers, things she can’t accomplish on the bench, but what she can do is make sure people are talking about it.

“I knew intellectually of course that it was happening and there were problems, but until I started going to our communities and counties all over the state talking to people,” she said, “I’ll admit I didn’t have a sense of how serious it is and I think we have to be talking about it much more.”

Walker also tried to take on another area of legislation — the state’s public campaign financing program.

The program allows Supreme Court candidates who meet certain requirements to fund their campaign with $500,000 provided by the state. Two of Walker’s opponents chose to use the program and Walker sued them both, saying they missed deadlines laid out in the law.

“I have no philosophical problem with the program,” Walker said, “but the reason I filed the appeals were because the rules weren’t being followed as they had been promulgated by the Legislature and I thought that before that amount of state funds was released to the candidate to spend on their campaign that the rules ought to be followed.”

Walker said she chose not to use public campaign financing because she didn’t think it was the best use of state dollars in the tough financial times West Virginia is facing, but had she won her lawsuits, lawsuits that worked their way up to the state Supreme Court, Walker would’ve asked the state to pay her legal fees.

“I felt like in our appeal, we were doing in part what the job of the State Election Commission should have been,” Walker said. “The State Election Commission has the job to certify the candidate as meeting all of the requirements of the statute and our position was the state election commission didn’t correctly authorize that discretion.”

Beth Walker speaking with Del. Kayla Kessinger during her Mt. Hope campaign stop.

If she were a legislator, Walker said, she would revisit the program given the financial hardships in the state, but as a Justice, she won’t have any say on future rewrites to the law.

Of the five candidates running for the one open seat on the high court, Walker has the longest list of endorsements. Conservative organizations like the West Virginia Business and Industry Council and West Virginia Chamber of Commerce are backing her, as well as Republican lawmakers like Senator Shelley Moore Capito, and third party groups have recently backed Walker as well, spending PAC money on attack ads focused on two of her opponents.

Walker said she can and will separate herself from these special interests as a member of the court and isn’t afraid to recuse herself from cases that may appear to have personal conflicts.

Watch: Donald Trump Speaks Live in Charleston

West Virginia Public Broadcasting will air the Donald Trump event in Charleston on Thursday May 5, at 7 p.m.

You can watch this live coverage in several different ways.

– Our TV broadcast will be available on The West Virginia Channel.

– A live video stream is provided via our Youtube Channel and this web post.

– You can also watch on your Apple or Android device using the new WVPB App, available for free online.

AP Fact Check: Trump Unlikely to Bring Coal Jobs Back

Donald Trump says he would bring back lost coal-mining jobs, and he is positioning for the November election in big coal states by portraying Hillary…

Donald Trump says he would bring back lost coal-mining jobs, and he is positioning for the November election in big coal states by portraying Hillary Clinton as a job killer.

Trump, however, has yet to explain exactly how he will revitalize Appalachia’s coal industry. To pull it off, he will have to overcome market forces and a push for cleaner fuels that have pummeled coal.

Coal’s slump is largely the result of cheap natural gas, which now rivals coal as a fuel for generating electricity. Older coal-fired plants are being idled to meet clean-air standards.

Another hurdle for reviving coal mining in Appalachia: less coal. Reserves of coal still in the ground are smaller than in western states like Wyoming, the leading coal producer.

TRUMP: “We’re going to get those miners back to work … the miners of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, which was so great to me last week, Ohio and all over are going to start to work again, believe me. They are going to be proud again to be miners.”

THE FACTS: It is unclear what Trump would do to increase mining jobs. He has long criticized the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, saying that its proposals to tighten emission standards on coal-burning power plants are killing American jobs. A Trump adviser said that a Trump administration would review many EPA regulations including those affecting the coal industry.

While the requirements have raised the cost of operating coal-fired plants, experts say a bigger factor in coal’s decline has been cheaper natural gas. Drilling techniques such as fracking have sparked a boom in gas production, driving down prices and prompting utilities to switch from coal.

As recently as 2008, about half the electricity in the U.S. came from burning coal and one-fifth from burning natural gas. Today, each accounts for about one-third — nuclear, hydroelectric and renewables like solar and wind make up most of the rest. Weak economic growth has hurt demand for Appalachian coal used in making steel.

U.S. coal production fell 10 percent last year. The Energy Department predicts it will drop 16 percent this year, the biggest one-year decline since 1958.

John Deskins, director of an economic-research bureau at West Virginia University, said government’s ability to boost coal production is limited.

“It is very unlikely we will see a return to levels of coal production like we observed in 2008,” the most recent peak in the state, Deskins said. Easing EPA restrictions — the industry is challenging EPA in court — would help over the long run, but not enough to offset the loss of market share to natural gas, he said.

There is another limitation on coal’s future in Appalachia: After decades of heavy production, there is less of it to be mined.

Wyoming, with rich reserves of low-sulfur coal near the surface, is the largest coal-producing-state and has the most coal still in the ground at producing mines. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Wyoming has three times as much recoverable reserves at producing mines as West Virginia and about twice as much as West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio combined.

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TRUMP: “I want clean coal, and we’re going to have clean coal and we’re going to have plenty of it. We’re going to have great, clean coal. We’re going to have an amazing mining business.”

THE FACTS: Clean coal covers a range of technologies, some already in use, to reduce pollution. Many types of emissions from coal-fired plants have been reduced, but the capturing and storing of carbon dioxide, the emission that scientists say is most responsible for climate change, has been harder to accomplish on a significant scale.

A model carbon-capture plant being built in Mississippi has encountered repeated delays and huge cost overruns that will make it one of the most expensive power plants ever built. The coal industry complains that carbon capture has not received the government incentives showered on renewable energy.

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TRUMP: “We’re not going to be Hillary Clinton. I watched her three or four weeks ago when she was talking about the miners as if they were just numbers, and she was talking about she wants the mines closed and she will never let them work again.”

THE FACTS: Trump is hitting Clinton for comments she made in March on CNN and which continue to dog the presumptive Democratic nominee on the campaign trail. But the remark was part of a longer answer.

Clinton said she had a policy to help coal country benefit from creating renewable energy “because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?” That was quickly followed by “We’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.”

This week an out-of-work coal miner in West Virginia confronted Clinton about the remarks, even handing her a photo of his family. Clinton said she had made “a misstatement.”

“What I was saying,” she told the voter, “is that the way things are going now we will continue to lose jobs.”

Sanders on Winning Back W.Va. Working Class: "You Gotta Make a Stand"

In an interview with NPR, Sen. Bernie Sanders explained why he thought the GOP was gaining popularity in low-income areas such as McDowell County, where…

In an interview with NPR, Sen. Bernie Sanders explained why he thought the GOP was gaining popularity in low-income areas such as McDowell County, where he is visiting today.

“Now, if I lived in McDowell County and the unemployment rate was sky-high, and I saw my kid get addicted to opiates and go to jail, there were no jobs, you know what? I would be looking at Washington and saying ‘what are you guys doing for me?’ And I’m going to look for an alternative,” Sanders said.

“The Democratic Party must make a stand, and the stand is that you cannot be on the side of Wall Street. You cannot be on the side of that pharmaceutical industry — which, by the way, charges our people the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs — you gotta make a stand. And the stand we gotta make is the stand with the people in McDowell County, W.Va., and poor people and working people all over this country.”

Read the entire transcript below.

STEVE INSKEEP: How is West Virginia different, if at all, from anywhere else you campaigned?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, West Virginia has some pockets of the worst poverty in the United States of America.

We’re going to McDowell County. And the reason we’re going there is that about half the people in that area are living in poverty — and that what is really astounding is that the life expectancy of people in that community is extraordinary low.

You know when we talk about poverty, Steve, we often think, well, it’s too bad somebody can’t afford a flat-screen TV, or go out to eat. But what poverty is really about is that we have millions of people who are living — who are dying at ages much, much younger than they should. In McDowell County, where we’re going tomorrow, the average life expectancy for men in that county is 64 years of age. Sixty-four years of age.

And yet you go a six-hour drive to Fairfax County, Va. — six-hour drive — a man can expect to live until the age of 82 years of age, 18 years longer than men in McDowell County…

INSKEEP: These are really compelling statistics, Senator. And you mention McDowell County — I believe the poverty rate there is something like 35 percent, and of course…

SANDERS: … I think it’s even higher than that actually.

INSKEEP: … a lot of people are certainly close to that. But there’s another statistic that’s on my mind, along with the poverty stats, and the life expectancy — shocking life-expectancy stats.

You’re going to a couple of counties — McDowell County, W.Va., is one of them — that voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and then voted against him, for Mitt Romney, in 2012. What has been happening to the Democratic Party in the region where you’re going?

SANDERS: Well, that’s an excellent question, and I think it goes well beyond McDowell County and well beyond West Virginia. And I think there are many people around this country — poor people, working people — who believe that the Democratic Party is not effectively standing up to them.

Now, if I lived in McDowell County and the unemployment rate was sky-high, and I saw my kid get addicted to opiates and go to jail, there were no jobs, you know what? I would be looking at Washington and saying “what are you guys doing for me?” And I’m going to look for an alternative.

I think one of the challenges we face, what my campaign is about, is making it clear that the Democratic Party must be on the side of working people and low-income people. Now I’m talking about poverty, and in this campaign I’m talking about the fact that we have the highest rate childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth. That we have 47 million people living in poverty … that we have 29 million people who have no health insurance, and we have thousands of people who die every year because they don’t get to a doctor on time.

The Democratic Party must make a stand, and the stand is that you cannot be on the side of Wall Street. You cannot be on the side of that pharmaceutical industry — which, by the way, charges our people the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs — you gotta make a stand. And the stand we gotta make is the stand with the people in McDowell County, W.Va., and poor people and working people all over this country.

INSKEEP: It’s interesting — when you travel in that region, as we did just a few weeks ago, for Morning Edition here — you’re in coal country, you hear people bring up Hillary Clinton in a specific way. She was criticized for saying that “we’re going to make coal jobs go away,” even though she was going on to say, “and we want to help people who lose their jobs.” But she was criticized for that one part of the statement. Would you be any better from the perspective…

SANDERS: Yeah I would…

INSKEEP: … of people in Appalachia who are concerned about that history?

SANDERS: Look, I have spent my whole life fighting for working people. I have a 98 percent voting record with the AFL-CIO. I have opposed disastrous trade agreements — and I think there is perhaps no candidate in the United States Senate who has a more progressive record than I do.

But I also believe, and understand, as a member of the Senate Environmental Committee, that climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing severe problems in our country and around the world. And we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

Now, I have introduced the most comprehensive climate change legislation ever introduced in the U.S. Senate. And in that legislation — because we understand it is not the fault of the coal miners, or people included in the fossil fuel industry, they have a right to want to feed their families, and live in dignity — we have $41 billion in that legislation to make sure that those workers who might be displaced as a result of the transition away from fossil fuel get the extended unemployment benefits they need, get the education they need, get the job training that they need. And also we are going to invest heavily in those communities.

INSKEEP: How do you speak to people in a community like that, who have deeply mixed feelings about government? You may run into the same person who says “I’m on Medicaid, I get various kinds of assistance, but I really don’t like it. I don’t like living like this, I don’t like depending on government.”

SANDERS: Well, I think it raises a fundamental issue about politics in America today and who we are as a civilized society. I understand that the right-wing has done a very good job in suggesting that “freedom” — and this is the Koch brothers’ line — “freedom” is about ending social security ,and Medicare and Medicaid, and actually abolishing the concept on the minimum wage. So Steve, you can be a free guy and work for $4 an hour — aren’t you a lucky guy?

But you know what, most Americans don’t believe that, and one of the things I’m really proud of in this campaign is that in election after election — in primary and caucus after caucus, right here in Indiana where we won last night two-thirds of the people 45 years of age or younger. … And the reason I think is they understand that in a democratic, civilized society, government has a very important role to play.

And the word has gotta get out — it doesn’t get out all that often in the media — that the United States is the only major country on Earth, for example, that doesn’t guarantee health care for all people. Life would be a lot different in McDowell County if all of the people there, and all of the people in Vermont, and all of the people in Connecticut, had health care as a right, which is the case 50 miles north of where I live, in Canada, for example.

INSKEEP: What do you say then, to people who just say — “regardless of my own situation, it bothers me that government has to do so much for people, or is doing so much”?

SANDERS: I think that that is mythology that has been effectively perpetrated by the big-money interests in this country. To say that every other country in the world guarantees health care to all of their people, every other country has paid medical and family leave, a number of countries provide free tuition in public colleges and universities, most countries take care of their elderly and their children a lot better than we do…

I think what you have seen in the last many years in this country is a very coordinated effort of the part of corporate media, and the wealthiest people in this country, to perpetuate an ideology, which says that government is terrible, government is awful — oh by the way, except when we can get some corporate welfare.

I point out in all of my speeches, Steve, that Walmart — which is owned by the Walton family, the wealthiest family in this country, worth some $149 billion — they get a huge subsidy from the taxpayers of this country, from you, from me, from every working people, person, because the wages they pay their employees are so low that many of those workers have to go on Medicaid or food stamps in order to survive. I don’t think the middle class of this country should be subsidizing the wealthiest family in the United States of America.

So I guess if it’s OK for the Walton family to get billions of dollars of support from the taxpayers of this country, maybe its OK for working families to get health care and paid family medical leave.

INSKEEP: Senator, I put a call out on Twitter — I said “I’m talking to Bernie Sanders, you got anything you want to know” — and the most consistent theme in the many responses we got had to do with how long you’re going to stay in this race. Even though you just won Indiana, people are looking at the delegate counts, recognizing that you’ve got long odds, and wondering if you’re going to stay in too long.

SANDERS: Well we’re going to stay in till the last vote is counted, and that will be in the primary in Washington, D.C.

INSKEEP: June 14.

SANDERS: That’s right. We think that … I don’t know, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I think that the people of every state in this country — including the largest state in America, California — should have a right to cast their votes as to who they want to see as president of the United States, and what kind of agenda they want the Democratic Party to have.

We won last night in Indiana — that is our 18th state. We’re going to fight in West Virginia — I think we’ve got a shot to win there. We’ve got a good shot to win in Oregon, and I think we’ve got a good shot to win in California and some other states, so we are in this race till the last vote is cast.

INSKEEP: Let me ask a couple of specific questions — just people on Twitter — here’s one. Are you threatening your revolution by continuing, and alienating some Democrats from voting for Hillary Clinton eventually?

SANDERS: Well I think we are perpetuating the political revolution by significantly increasing the level of political activity that we’re seeing in this country. Millions of people are now coming into the political process as the result of what our campaign is about. I think it is good for the Unites States of America, good for the Democratic Party, to have a vigorous debate, to engage people in the political process.

You know, two years ago in 2014, 63 percent of the American people didn’t even bother to vote, and 80 percent of young people and 80 percent low-income people didn’t bother to vote in the midterm elections — I think that that is pretty pathetic. And I think that Democrats do well when the voter turnout is high. Republicans lose when the voter turnout is high.So I’m going to do everything I can to stimulate political discourse in this country — get young people, working people involved in the political process.

We think we have a path towards victory — admittedly it is a narrow path, but when I started this campaign we were 60 points behind Secretary Clinton; yesterday here in early May we won in Indiana. I think we’ve got some more good victories coming — so we are in this race until the very last vote is cast.

INSKEEP: Another variation on this question from Twitter: Which is more important, a Sanders presidency or a Democratic presidency?

SANDERS: Well, I think that if you look at the issues facing this country, and the differences between Secretary Clinton and myself, I think, a) my policies and my agenda will be better for the working families of this country, and second of all, if you look at virtually every poll that’s out there — including one from CNN today — Bernie Sanders does better against Donald Trump than does Hillary Clinton. So if we want to make sure that we do not have a Donald Trump in the White House, I think that at this point Bernie Sanders is the strongest candidate.

INSKEEP: Do you mean a Sanders presidency is more important than this person’s suggestion that a Democratic presidency might be more important?

SANDERS: Well, what I’m just suggesting is — if you look at every poll that’s out there — Bernie Sanders does better against Donald Trump, more likely to defeat Donald Trump, than Hillary Clinton.

INSKEEP: One more question along those lines, and this is my question now — you told Chuck Todd of NBC the other day that if Secretary Clinton does clinch the nomination quote “the responsibility will be on Secretary Clinton, to convince all people,” not just your supporters, “that she is the kind of president this country needs.” Are you convinced, Senator?

SANDERS: Well I thought my point was, that it’s true of Secretary Clinton, it’s true of Bernie Sanders, it is true of Donald Trump — you want to go out and win elections, you’ve got to convince the people of this country that you are the candidate that works best for their interests. And I think there’s a lot of work that has to be done on the part of all of the candidates.

INSKEEP: The reason I ask is because you did say earlier in the campaign she was not qualified. Can you convince yourself, or have you convinced yourself, that she is qualified?

SANDERS: Right now — as I have said many times, Steve — I think that a Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster for this country. And I intend to do everything that I can to see that that does not happen.

INSKEEP: Does that mean to say that you would be out this fall if you don’t win the nomination, campaigning?

SANDERS: You know, as I just said Steve, I think that a Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster for this country.

I am the most progressive member of the Unites States Senate, I think. I have fought as hard as I can for working people, and I’m not going to see a president come into office like a Donald Trump, who is busy dividing us up in terms of picking on Mexicans, and Latinos, and Muslims, and women, and veterans, and African-Americans. That is not the type of president that we need, and that is not the type of president that I — I will do everything in my power to make sure that he does not become our president,

So, Steve, so — thank you so much…

INSKEEP: Senator? Do you mind if I ask one more question?

SANDERS: One last question. Sure, we got time for one more.

INSKEEP: Yeah just, talk me through — because you said you have tough path, but one that you can walk — I’m just interested about a little bit of the mechanics here.

You’d have to win a lot of delegates — a great majority of delegates along the way to get a majority of pledged delegates. There are some big states ahead — it’s certainly true — but just the way delegates are awarded, even if you win California, even if you win West Virginia, you don’t get all of the delegates. They’re not winner-take-all. Doesn’t that make this extraordinarily difficult for you to…

SANDERS: Yes, it’s an uphill battle. But you know what? Steve, when I started this campaign, it was an extraordinarily uphill battle — we were 60 points behind Secretary Clinton. Polls out there in the last few weeks, a few had us ahead actually in national polls, or a few points behind. The path to victory is to do extremely well in the remaining states — and as you indicate, California, of course, is the largest state. And we hope to do well there, and win that state.

INSKEEP: Could — and is…

SANDERS: But here is the other path, Steve — you asked me a question, let me give you an answer here — is that we have won a number of states, in Washington and New Hampshire, by landslide victories, and I’m talking about 65, 70, 75 percent of the vote. I think it is incumbent on the superdelegates—

The problem, one of the main problems that we have, is that the establishment Democrats, of course, supporting all of — virtually all of them are supporting Hillary Clinton. I think that in those states where we have won landslide victories, those delegates should reflect the wishes of the people of their state and give us their votes.

And then I think we have got to make the case to the superdelegates, who in many cases, were on board for Hillary Clinton even before I got into the race, that they should take a hard look at which candidate is stronger against Donald Trump. And I think we can make that case.

INSKEEP: Let me follow up on that…

SANDERS: Steve I apologize — one more question, because I’ve gotta run here.

INSKEEP: Is there a real danger that Donald Trump — now that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee — that he’s the kind of different candidate who might seriously appeal to the very kinds of voters that you’ve been appealing to all this time, that you want to bring back to the Democratic Party?

SANDERS: Is that a serious — you mean…

INSKEEP: A real danger of that, yeah, in the fall?

SANDERS: You say a risk? Well, you know as I said a moment ago — what campaigns are about is going out and making a case to the American people. Does Donald Trump have support in this country? Of course he has support — he has won the Republican nomination, so of course he has a lot of support. He has won it overwhelmingly in state after state after state.

INSKEEP: Can he drag Democrats over to the Republican side?

SANDERS: Well the question, I think that’s the wrong question, Steve. The question is, why is somebody with Donald Trump’s perspective appealing to Democrats?

That gets back to the question we talked about at the beginning of this conversation. Has the Democratic Party, has the leadership made the case that they are standing there, fighting for the poor people of McDowell County, or the working people of Indiana, or of New Mexico, or of California? Have they stood up and said that “maybe we gotta take on the billionaire class, maybe it’s wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, maybe we should not be getting significant sums of money from Wall Street or from the pharmaceutical industry that charge us the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,” you know, “maybe we’ve gotta stand with the people who for the last 20 or 30 years have seen a decline in their standard of living”?

You know, those are the issues that the Democratic Party has got to ask itself. And I think when it does, and it makes it clear that they are prepared to take on the big-money interests, I think the Democratic Party will do just fine — and that’s kind of what this campaign is about.

INSKEEP: Sen. Sanders, thanks very much

SANDERS: Thank you very much Steve. Take care.

W.Va. Voting Booths: No Cameras Allowed. Or Are They?

West Virginia’s Secretary of State has made it very clear, West Virginia voters cannot take photos while in the voting booth. In fact, Secretary Natalie Tennant says you can’t take your phone into the voting booth at all. But some people don’t think state code is clear on the matter.

A Questionable Ballot

David Delk of Ohio County voted early this year. He says he noticed something off about the ballot.

“When I got to the nonpartisan board of education ballot,” Delk recalled, “just the fact that five candidates were on one page and another candidate was on the second page, and there were no clear instructions on how to get to the second page – it just struck me as fundamentally unfair.”

So Delk did what comes naturally to many of us: “I took my phone out, and took a picture of that section of the ballot,” Delk said. Then he posted the picture on social media.

The Letter of the Law

Secretary of State’s Office says he wasn’t the only one documenting the voting experience. The office received several other reports of photos taken inside ballot booths – photos which then appeared on social media. These reports prompted the office to issue a statement saying it’s illegal to photograph any part of the voting process, that no electronic devices or cellphones are allowed in the voting booth, and that poll workers have been instructed to tell people not to have devices out while voting.

“As code stands right now, it clearly and plainly says you cannot use an electronic device to record any of the proceedings,” said Secretary of State Natalie Tennant.

Delk, who also happens to be an attorney, maintains that the language does not really prohibit photographs or cell phones which brings the legislative intent into question.

“The language of the statute is important, every word is there for a reason,” said Delk. “And when they say you can’t take pictures that record the voting process, then there is a subcategory of pictures that you can take.”

§3-4A-23:Persons prohibited about voting booths; penalties:

Excepting election officials acting under authority of sections nineteen, twenty and twenty-two of this article in the conduct of the election, and qualified persons assisting voters pursuant to section twenty-two of this article, no person other than the voter may be in, about or within five feet of the voting booth during the time the voter is voting at any election. While the voter is voting, no person may communicate with the voter in any manner and the voter may not communicate with any other person or persons. No person may enter a voting booth with any recording or electronic device in order to record or interfere with the voting process. Any conduct or action of an election official about or around the voting booth while the voter is in the process of voting, except as expressly provided in this article, is a violation of this section. Any person violating the provisions of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or confined in jail not more than twelve months, or both fined and confined.

A Modern Problem

This question of photos in the ballot booth isn’t a totally new problem, though it is new to this era of communication, texting, and selfies. New Hampshire tried to ban taking selfies with completed ballots a few years ago. A federal court overturned the state’s ban, ruling that the images are a constitutionally protected form of speech. Like officials in New Hampshire, Secretary Tennant cites concerns about potential vote-buying and voter intimidation.

“We have to look beyond just the moment of taking the picture and look at any unintended consequences,” Tennant said.

Delk says documenting problems as well as referring to notes and last-minute research on candidates are all reasons people shouldn’t be stripped of cell phones. And what if posting a selfie on social media reminds or even inspires another West Virginian to hit the polls in a state with record low voter turnouts? Tennant said: Take the picture right outside instead, or risk a $1000 fine and possible jail time.

After discussions with the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office, Delk removed his photo and replaced it with a drawing. Since then measures have been taken to correct the Ohio County ballot. And Secretary Tennant says while she’s willing to discuss changes lawmakers may want to make to state code, at this point her interpretation of the law is that recording devices are not allowed in the voting booths.