“You’d go in there and there’d be people everywhere,” said Albert Baisden, a retired trucking company owner in Dingess, recalling election times in the 1950s. “You had to fight your way in through the crowd to get to vote. You couldn’t hardly get a parking place. Everybody was grabbing you by the right arm, by the left arm, saying, ‘Vote for me!’”
Back then, this patch of West Virginia was more vibrant, as well. Ms. Hill recalled that her hotel was full almost every night, mostly with men working in construction for the mines. She remembers they used to take off their work boots in their trucks and change into slippers so they would not track mud on her carpet.
But in the span of a generation, the town’s sense of community fell apart, she said. Ms. Hill said she has had 27 flat-screen TVs stolen from her rooms. Eventually she stopped replacing them. Even the cushions on the couch in her lobby were stolen; a lawn chair pad is in their place.
“We have nothing now,” Ms. Hill said, sitting in the lobby of the hotel, an airy room with tall ceilings and wall paneling adorned with teapots and cuckoo clocks. “It’s all gone.”
Voting went down, too. The midterm election of 1998 was the first time in Ms. Hill’s life she did not vote. She was not alone: Only 29 percent of eligible West Virginians voted that year, according to Dr. McDonald’s data.
The strongest predictor of voting, according to Dr. Highton, is political engagement. Those who are interested in politics — whether they grew up in families that followed it or developed interest as an adult — tend to vote, he said.
“It’s like being a sports fan,” he said. “Some people just aren’t.”
Clara Bender, 69, a waitress in Madison, has never voted.
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