Ironically-Named City of Sistersville Still Bans Women from Voting

By Doug Barry | September 14, 2013 | 8:30pm

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West Virginia (unfairly most of the time) seems to be the go-to backwoods state in America. Incest, murderous hillbillies, haunted coal-mining towns straddling the cave mouth to Hell, illiteracy, and prescription drug abuse are often mentioned in connection with West Virginia, as if the Appalachian squiggle-blob state (seriously, it’s like the cartographer coughed while drawing the borders) functioned as a repository for all of America’s nastiest secrets. You want to make a movie about a crew of British spelunkers who find themselves deep underground at the mercy of highly-evolved, carnivorous bat-people? Set it in West Virginia! You’re lost and hoping to stop at a gas station to ask for directions? Don’t stop in West Virginia! Every state has its stretches of desolate terror highway, so where does West Virginia’s bad rep come from?

It might have something to do with outdated town charters like the one belonging to a tiny city on the banks of the Ohio River called Sistersville, a place that sounds unfairly creepy, as if the twins from The Shining stood sentry-like next to the sign at the city limits, beckoning for creeped-out motorists to play with them. In fact, Sistersville, with a population just shy of 1,500, has a more unfortunate problem than ghosts wandering the city limits — its charter still bars women from voting. Yup, the ironic twist in Sistersville is that, according to the town charter, only the dudes can vote.

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The city-wide ban on women’s suffrage gained some attention this week when the Wall Street Journal picked up an item initially reported by the Tyler Star News after a Sistersville town meeting. There’s been debate recently about changing the charter to reflect that Sistersville is not, in fact, the town from The Village, with some residents arguing from an abiding sense of pragmatism that changing the charter so women have the right to vote is just a symbolic gesture, amounting to little more than needless expense and mountains of paperwork.

See, unlike some other less-prudent townships, cities, boroughs, and hamlets, Sistersville doesn’t want to spend money it doesn’t have, and it doesn’t have a lot of money. Sistersville’s city recorder Julie Schleier brushed off questions about the city changing its charter, saying, “We don’t need to amend it because the Nineteenth Amendment takes care of it. It would be a waste of paperwork.” We’re talking thousands of dollars in legal fees, and the newly-revised charter would have to be bound in super-expensive leather. Does it really matter that much?

The Nineteenth Amendment ensures that women can freely vote in Sistersville. In a way, ignoring the outdated charter — which must have all kinds of other anachronistic nonsense about not leaving your gaslamp on when the Wendigo comes around, or making sure to chase away French fur trappers if they wander too close to your property line — is itself a sign of progress; it’s so thoroughly taken for granted that women can vote that Sistersville charter issue has been reduced to a cost/benefits issue. Besides, according to Schleier, West Virginia is full of outdated town charters, like the charter in nearby Paden City that requires men have to do manual labor for the city two days out of every year for the discount rate of $1.05. Why focus on one outdated town charter, misogynistic as it may be, when there are plenty riddled with long-ignored pen strokes from a long time ago?

Then again, not changing the charter to show that women can vote would leave Sistersville’s female population particularly susceptible to the whims of a post-apocalyptic town despot who takes over when the United States federal government falls into ruin (one must always plan ahead). Plus, it must really suck to live, work, and pay property taxes in a city that doesn’t officially consider you a full-fledged citizen.

[WSJ], [Tyler Star News]

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