WASHINGTON DC (LOOTPRESS) – West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner accepted an invitation to testify before the United States House of Representatives on Thursday regarding voter confidence in elections.
The only state chief election official who had been invited to testify, Secretary Warner addressed the Committee on House Administration regarding state and nationwide voting issues, including voter resources, practices, and fraud.
“West Virginia’s pride ourselves as frontiersmen who blaze trails rather than follow paths,” said Secretary Warner early on in his address. “Since my election in 2016, we’ve been fighting for election integrity. The US Constitution states the time, place, and manner of elections shall be left to state legislators. Working closely with our legislature, we’ve built perhaps the best balanced election access with election security process in the country.”
Secretary Warner would cite three primary elements to success in election administrations, the first of which was, “state autonomy.”
“West Virginia does not rely on federal funding for election security. We have permanent state funding for equipment security and maintenance autonomous tools that we have, including GIS technology to improve elections and the voter experience,” he said.
The second element addressed by the Secretary of State was,maintaining voter confidence.”
“Voter confidence begins with clean voter rolls, followed by convenient ballot access and corresponding security,” he said. “Since my election, I have worked closely with county clerks to remove over 400,000 outdated records from West Virginia voter rolls; approximately one of every four registrations had been abandoned or otherwise made ineligible. Nothing good comes from bloated, outdated voter rolls.”
The third element alluded to would be, “limited Federal Government involvement,” of which he stated,
“The Federal Government must let states run their elections and maintain accurate voter rolls. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) implements a lengthy blackout period for changing voter rolls, which the length should be reevaluated to allow ongoing list maintenance processes.
The federal requirement to wait several federal general election cycles to remove outdated and abandoned registrations should be left to the state Legislatures to determine, as an increase in technology has come with greater confidence that voters can update their registrations and vote easier than any other time in our nation’s history.”
Secretary Warner additionally asserted that overreach from courts was a substantial issue which could negatively impact the election process, stating,
“Rather than going through the legislative process to change election procedures, the courts have been used to change the way people vote, at times on the eve of an election. The overreach by courts must be curtailed and improved long before or just after an election, not during.
That is, for election fraud and irregularities, courts must act more quickly on election challenges, before elections are certified, or otherwise take action after voting has taken place. Otherwise, trial court decisions cannot be reviewed in a timely manner prior to affecting the election process, which can affect the outcomes.”
The Committee on House Administration Americans Confidence in Elections hearing is currently ongoing and can be viewed here.
