Delegate Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, has a yearly tradition with his family - they walk to Malden Elementary School on Election Day to cast their ballots.
For the last four years, the Rowes, and everyone else in the flats of Malden, have been voting in the wrong Senate district.
"You sort of assume that the folks study the maps and get it right," Rowe said, when informed of the issue.
Based on county precinct maps, Malden should be split into two precincts, Precinct 123 and Precinct 115, both of which vote in the eighth Senatorial district.
The Rowes should be registered in Precinct 115. But Matthew Massie, a rising senior at Yale who is friends with Rowe's son, noticed that his friend was registered in Precinct 117, which votes in Senate District 17.
When given names of roads in Malden in both Precincts 115 and 123, Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick confirmed that most of the town was placed in Precinct 117, with registrations spanning back to 2012.
The nearly 600 people who live in Malden (an estimate by Rowe) adds to the more than 900 voters in Kanawha County who were placed in the wrong district for the May primary. This is the first instance of people voting in the wrong Senate district.
It is unclear how many registered voters in Malden have voted in the wrong race over the past four years.
County maps of precinct lines place the voters of Malden in the correct Senate districts, but somehow those people were registered in Precinct 117.
The county is unsure why.
McCormick said it could be an issue stemming from the consolidation of precinct lines as populations have shrunk in the eastern part of the county.
"Somebody's going to want to know why. We may not know," McCormick said. "But we've got to get it changed."
In 1990, most of Malden was located in Precinct 116. But in the 90s, the county clerk's office got rid of that precinct and consolidated it with Precinct 117.
That didn't stop the state from citing Precinct 116 in state code, placing it in the eighth Senate district.
"We need to shine a bright light on it," Rowe said. "We need to try to make sense that the Senate, in adjusting the boundaries, used a precinct that no longer existed."
While the state code may have caused confusion, it's unlikely to be the sole cause of the voting problem.
"I see no intentional misconduct," said Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper. "I see a very complicated stature that was thrown together for personal gerrymandering."
Before the state redistricted for the 2012 election, all of Kanawha County was located in both the eighth and 17th Senatorial Districts. When the districts were redrawn, Senate District 8 snaked along the Kanawha River, through Malden, Rand and Belle.
The mistake was found before the Kanawha County Commission's August 10 meeting to correct voting lines in the county, but Carper said he is not convinced that the problem is solved.
"I'm not close to being satisfied that they have a handle on this," Carper said.
It is uncertain if the correction in Malden would require one half of the town to go to Rand to vote, where the polling place for Precinct 115 is located.
McCormick is not sure where the people of Malden will vote in the upcoming election, but said its likely that those who are supposed to be in Precinct 115 will have to go to Rand.
When informed that his tradition of voting with his family at Malden Elementary might be over, Rowe wasn't too disappointed.
"It appears that there's a good faith effort to get it all right," Rowe said.
Reach Daniel Desrochers at dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter.