More than 100,000 new voters have registered in West Virginia within the past two years.
Since January 2017, Berkeley and Kanawha Counties had the highest increase in new voter registrations.
The West Virginia Secretary of State’s office reports in a news release that more than 30,000 of the 100,000 new voters are high school seniors.
During the recent midterm election, 48 percent of registered voters showed up to the polls, casting nearly 600,000 ballots statewide.
That’s compared to the last midterm election in 2014 – 37 percent – which was the lowest voter turnout in at least six decades.
Author: Liz McCormick
Liz is WVPB's Webmaster/Digital Coordinator and Eastern Panhandle Bureau Chief, based in Shepherdstown, WV on Shepherd University's campus. Liz is a native of Charleston, West Virginia. She received a M.A. in Strategic Communication from American University in 2022 and a B.A. in Communication and New Media from Shepherd in 2014. Prior to her role as webmaster, Liz was WVPB's Eastern Panhandle reporter from 2014-2022, the House of Delegates reporter on "The Legislature Today" from 2015-2017, and she covered K-12/higher education from 2020-2022. Liz has also worked as a technical assistant and associate producer on "The Legislature Today."
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