West Virginia
The judges and school boards were done by May, the executive rides 2028, and the canvass doesn't even start until the fifth day.
Why were the judges elected at the primary?
State deltas
Every state has hair. Here is West Virginia's.
The rules that make this state different from the last one, what each breaks if you assume the national default, and how the engine resolves it.
Every judicial level — Supreme Court, Intermediate Court, circuit, family, magistrates — and all 55 county school boards elect on primary day, nonpartisan by division, plurality, no runoff, no November appearance. A November-oriented crawler misses the entire nonpartisan layer, and a runoff-watcher waits for a second round that never comes. This May: both appointed Supreme Court incumbents beaten, one seat won with 31% of a five-way.
Nonpartisan races carry a first-and-only round on primary day. The one exception is statutory: a vacancy-fill judicial election may ride the general (§3-10-3), so 'judicial = May' is a default, not an axiom.
No more than two school-board members may come from the same magisterial district (§18-5-1) — so the fifth-highest vote-getter can win a seat over the third-highest if the leaders cluster in one district. A results parser that ranks by votes alone declares the wrong winners, and the districts themselves are redrawn by the county commission (3–10 per county).
School-board tallies run through the magisterial-district layer: rank, then apply the two-per-district cap, skipping candidates from exhausted districts. The same layer gates commission candidacies — no two commissioners from one district.
The governor and the entire Board of Public Works elected in 2024 on the presidential cycle — a midterm crawler expecting an executive slate finds none. County row offices mostly ride 2024 too (sheriff, prosecutor, assessor) or 2028 (both clerks, six-year terms): the November county ballot is one commission seat per county, every county, every even year.
West Virginia's office classes carry three distinct county cycles — 6-year commission stagger, 4-year presidential offices, 6-year clerks — plus the presidential executive cycle. Nothing is inferred from 'midterm' or 'gubernatorial year' labels.
The elected county clerk administers the election, a three-member ballot commission (clerk chairing, both major parties seated) prepares the ballots, and the county commission itself sits as the board of canvassers. A model with one 'election office' per county files certificates against the wrong body — canvass artifacts come from the commission, not the clerk who ran the election.
Three roles per county, with the clerk deliberately appearing in two of them. Certification chains route through the commission-as-canvassers, with multi-county certificates forwarded to the Secretary of State.
Counties submit election-night results to the state's Clarity portal voluntarily — some hand paper returns to local media first — and the official canvass doesn't convene until the fifth day after the election (November 9). Certification then waits out a 48-hour recount-demand window. A scraper that treats election night as authoritative, or expects a next-morning canvass, is a week early.
Election night is modeled as a partial, voluntary feed; the canvass-start and 48-hour-window dates are first-class events, and nothing is 'final' before the certification order.
West Virginia's semi-closed tradition ended on one side: the GOP closed its 2026 primary to unaffiliated voters for the first time, while Democrats stayed open — and unaffiliated voters could still take a nonpartisan-only ballot carrying the judicial and school races. The same primary was the first under HB 3016's photo-ID requirement, replacing the old utility-bill rules. Turnout models calibrated on prior cycles are wrong on both axes.
Primary eligibility is per-party, per-cycle data — never carried forward — and the nonpartisan-only ballot path is modeled so unaffiliated participation in May doesn't read as party participation.
Plurality decides every race at both elections, and a tie doesn't trigger a new vote: the board of canvassers picks a winner within 30 days, failing which the Governor selects one. Ranked-choice voting is statutorily banned (SB 490, 2025). Runoff-detection logic imported from Alabama or Arkansas fires on nothing, and a tie-resolution model expecting a coin flip or a revote misses that the outcome is a discretionary appointment.
No runoff paths exist in the state model; ties resolve to a selection event with its own 30-day clock and fallback authority.
Most of the 231 municipalities elect on their own charter dates — the SoS published two June 2026 cohorts alone — but SB 50 (2025) now requires all municipal elections to ride a statewide primary or general, with conflicting charters amended by July 1, 2032. The municipal layer is in a live multi-year migration: per-town dates are correct one cycle and wrong the next.
Each municipality carries its own election calendar with a migration flag; the 2032 convergence is tracked as charters amend rather than assumed done.
Federal to public service district
What West Virginia actually elects.
The county-unit design makes this ladder read clean — 55 school districts on 55 counties — but most of its seats were filled in 2024 or settled in May; November's slice is thin on purpose.
Congressional map
Where those seats are.
The 2 congressional districts in force for the 2026 cycle — not necessarily the map this delegation was elected under. West Virginia has not redrawn since the 119th Congress was seated.
| District | Population | Median income |
|---|---|---|
| WV-01 | 866,374 | $50,632 |
| WV-02 | 903,697 | $61,685 |
County ledger
Clarity carries it — when the counties choose to feed it.
Election-night submission to the state portal is voluntary; the canvass convenes on the fifth day and certification waits out a 48-hour recount window. The primary certified June 10 with contests still open in Harrison and Fayette. Thirteen of 55 shown.
| County | Feed vehicle | Precincts | Contests | Status | Last read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kanawha | Vendor app | 184 | 19 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Berkeley | Vendor app | 80 | 16 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Monongalia | Vendor app | 72 | 15 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Wood | Vendor app | 69 | 15 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Cabell | Vendor app | 64 | 15 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Raleigh | Vendor app | 54 | 14 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Harrison · contest pending | Vendor app | 48 | 14 | Sweeping | 4 hr |
| Mercer | Vendor app | 42 | 13 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Jefferson | Vendor app | 36 | 13 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Putnam | Vendor app | 34 | 12 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Fayette · contest pending | Vendor app | 32 | 12 | Sweeping | 4 hr |
| Tucker | Vendor app | 9 | 8 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Pendleton | Vendor app | 9 | 8 | Verified | 4 hr |