Elliott Pritt is being arraigned in federal court today on child enticement charges. He is already out of the House of Delegates and off the November ballot. And thanks to a provision deleted from a 2024 election law bill by a Senate committee that never explained why, the Fayette County Republican Party cannot do a single thing about any of it.
That last part is a sticking point.
Pritt was arrested on July 22, 2026. He resigned his House seat on July 27, after an initial appearance in Federal Court in Charleston. On August 4 he signed a notarized withdrawal from the November general election ballot and filed it with the Secretary of State’s office. The withdrawal cost him nothing. He was already done. But for the Fayette County Republican Executive Committee, it closed the only door that mattered.
There will be no Republican on the November ballot in District 50. Not because no one wants to run. Not because the party failed to act. Because a Senate committee attached an amendment to a bill two years ago that was not well thought out.
What the Law Said Before
For years, West Virginia election law gave political parties a straightforward safety valve. If a nominee withdrew from the general election ballot, the party executive committee could name a replacement, so long as it acted at least 78 days before the election. The provision was not complicated. It was not controversial. It existed for exactly the kind of situation that unfolded in Fayette County this month: a nominee who, for whatever reason, could no longer stand for election.
That protection was codified in West Virginia Code section 3-5-19(a)(6). It was the kind of provision that sits unremarked in the statutes for years, until the day someone desperately needs it.
In the 2024 legislative session, it was deleted.
How HB 4350 Started
House Bill 4350 was introduced on January 10, 2024, by Delegate Josh Holstein. Its purpose was narrow and sensible: close a loophole that allowed party executive committees to appoint candidates to the ballot after the filing period had closed, simply because nobody from that party had bothered to file. Holstein had a legitimate grievance. Under existing law, a candidate could go through the entire filing process in January, run a primary, and then face a late August appointment by a party committee of a candidate who had never filed, never campaigned, and never faced voters in a primary.
“I don’t think it is fair for executive committees, whether Republican or Democrat, to have the ability to appoint someone to the ballot after the filing period simply if they just don’t file a candidate during that period. It’s not fair to candidates to have to make a decision in January and some other candidate could get appointed in August, forgoing the entire primary process. It’s absolutely absurd.” -- WVGOP Chairman Josh Holstein
He is right. And the bill he introduced did what he said it would do. It eliminated the ability to fill no-filing vacancies. It left the withdrawal replacement provision, section 3-5-19(a)(6), untouched. The bill passed the House Judiciary Committee on January 25. It passed the full House on January 30. Through every step of the House process, the withdrawal safety valve survived.
What Happened in the Senate
On January 31, HB 4350 was referred to the Senate Government Organization Committee. The chair of that committee was Senator Jack David Woodrum of Summers County.
The bill sat in Woodrum’s committee for five weeks. Then, on March 6, the committee reported it out with an amendment. On March 7, that amendment was adopted by voice vote. The Senate passed the amended bill on March 8. The House concurred on March 9. Governor Justice signed it on March 27, 2024. It took effect January 1, 2025.
The amendment Woodrum’s committee produced was short. It deleted section 3-5-19(a)(6) entirely, the provision that had allowed a party to name a replacement when its nominee withdrew from the general election ballot.
Read that again slowly.
The provision was not in the introduced version of the bill. It was not in the House committee substitute. It was not in the version that passed the full House 80 days earlier. It materialized in Woodrum’s committee, was adopted by voice vote, generated no recorded debate, produced no roll call, and appeared in no version of the bill’s stated purpose at any stage of the legislative process.
Every version of HB 4350, from introduction through House passage, described a bill about failure-to-file vacancies. The withdrawal provision was never once mentioned in the purpose statement. The gap between what the bill claimed to do and what it actually did, once Woodrum’s committee was finished with it, is the central fact of this story.
When the WASP asked Holstein about it, he acknowledged the Senate changed his bill in ways that were not part of his intent.
“The intent of the legislation is still intact, but there were additions made to it that was not in the House versions, introduced or committee sub. What the Senate changed is they struck the withdrawal section of this part of the code which prohibits an executive committee from making appointments to the ballot if someone withdraws. There are multiple arguments as to why.” -- WVGOP Chairman Josh Holstein
He added that the withdrawal section will likely be revisited. “I don’t see the original part of the bill being changed at all. If anything changes, it will be to the withdrawal section of this part of code.”
Note what Holstein did not say: he did not say he knew about the deletion when it happened. He did not say he agreed with it. He said there are multiple arguments as to why it occurred, and left it there.
Nobody who was in that Senate committee room in March 2024 has offered a public explanation of why the withdrawal provision needed to go. There is no floor debate to read. There is no roll call to check. Senator Woodrum did not respond to our request for comment.
The Trap Closes
By August 1 2026, the WVGOP had publicly disavowed Pritt, in what party leaders described as the first such action in party history. The Fayette County Republican Executive Committee was ready to move. They identified a path: if the State Election Commission disqualified Pritt on grounds related to his federal charges, a separate provision that HB 4350 had left intact would allow the party to name a replacement nominee.
On August 4, Pritt filed his withdrawal.
Under West Virginia law, a withdrawal is self-executing. It takes effect the moment it is filed. Nobody approves it. No process reviews it. And it immediately moots a pending disqualification proceeding, because a person who is no longer a candidate cannot be disqualified as one.
Secretary of State Kris Warner said it plainly: because the Legislature removed the option for parties to select replacement candidates when a vacancy is created by withdrawal, there was no alternative way to replace the candidate on the ballot.
The Fayette County Republican Executive Committee did have one remaining avenue. Under a separate statute that HB 4350 did not touch, the committee submitted three names to the governor to fill Pritt’s unexpired legislative term. That process runs on an entirely different statutory track from placing a name on the November ballot. Readers who assume those two things are the same process should know they are not. One door was open. The other had been locked in a Senate committee two years earlier.
What Nobody Is Saying Out Loud
The deletion of section 3-5-19(a)(6) raises a question that nobody in Charleston has answered publicly: was it intentional?
There are two possibilities. The first is that Woodrum’s committee made a drafting error, sweeping out the withdrawal provision while targeting something else, and nobody caught it before the bill was signed. That is possible. Legislative amendments move fast at the end of a session and scope creep happens.
The second possibility is that someone in that committee wanted the withdrawal replacement option gone, for reasons that made sense in March 2024, and the Pritt situation is an unintended consequence of a deliberate choice.
“Inadvertently, or otherwise.” That phrase will mean something different to different readers in Charleston. The WASP does not know which version is true. What the WASP knows is that no one who was in that room has volunteered an explanation.
What November Looks Like Now
District 50 in Fayette County goes to the polls in November with Democrat Matthew Anderson, a special education teacher, and independent Tom Louisos, a former Fayette County Commission president, on the ballot, and some other lower level candidates. No Republican. Write-in candidates had a window to file after the withdrawal and may yet appear.
In a district Republicans had held, that is a seat now genuinely in play, not because of anything the Fayette County party did or failed to do, but because of an amendment offered up by Senator Woodrum’s senate committee.
Holstein says the Legislature will fix the withdrawal section in 2027. That is probably true, and it is the right call. But it does not help anyone in Fayette County this November but Matthew Anderson.
A Senate committee chair let an amendment through that nobody has explained. A voice vote produced no record. A disgraced delegate filed paperwork from a federal jail cell and beat the party out of a nominee.
That is the inside of how West Virginia could lose a GOP House seat before a single vote is cast.🐝
The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, humor, and commentary outlet. wvwasp.com | @wvwasp on X.