Kris Warner on mountaineers, ballots and trust
West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner is a leading voice on election confidence. A former state Republican Party chairman and economic development official, Warner brings perspective to questions of trust, local control, entrepreneurship and civic life in the Mountain State. In this interview, he discusses West Virginia’s election approach, the role of county clerks and poll workers, retaining young people, and the independence that shapes life in Appalachia. He recently spoke with American Habits editor Ray Nothstine.
From the outside, we do not hear a lot of controversy about elections in West Virginia. In other states, we see headlines about disputes, problems, or ballots being counted long after Election Day. What lessons does West Virginia offer other states about running trustworthy elections?
Sec. Kris Warner: First of all, Ray, as you probably well know, it has not always been that way in West Virginia. We have a storied past when it comes to elections.
But when you talk about running a trustworthy election, it is about transparency and confidence, and one leads to the other. It is not just about making our records available. It is also about allowing voters, candidates, and advocates to participate in the election administration process. That leads to confidence in the results because those individuals have firsthand knowledge about how well, or how poorly, elections are run.
It also requires good election laws that balance access to election processes and materials with security. In each of the two legislative sessions since I have been secretary of state, our division has put together several election security bills to make sure we stay on top of the issues and keep confidence at a high level.
For example, we do not allow candidates to be in polling places where voters are actually casting their ballots. But in West Virginia, we do allow the political parties to select poll workers who work in teams of opposite parties to operate the polls.
The Republican and Democratic executive committees make suggestions to the county clerks about who should serve in each precinct. In this last election, we had more than 8,400 poll workers working precincts across the state.
Those party representatives help administer the ballots. They check IDs, verify signatures in the poll books, assist with ballot-marking devices and safeguard paper ballots. At the end of the evening, they are responsible for returning the equipment to the county courthouse.
West Virginia is known for its beautiful mountains and small communities, and some communities are fairly isolated. Does that geography create special challenges for running elections, whether it is distance, broadband, staffing, or getting information to voters? Is that isolation a real challenge for your office, and what do you do about it?
Sec. Warner: Certainly, it is. When it comes to travel time to polling places, you can look at a map and say that, as the crow flies, someone may live only one mile from a polling place. But if that means going down the mountainside, traveling along a stream, finding the bridge to cross over, and then going back up the mountainside to a polling place, that one mile can be very different.
I have been in places where it is a 30-minute drive just to go one mile as the crow flies. For the most part, the county clerks and county commissions do a great job respecting those geographic barriers when they design precinct boundaries and polling locations.
You mentioned broadband. That is an issue across the state, and we have been building it out. When I was at USDA Rural Development and later at the West Virginia Economic Development Authority, that was something we worked on. The next three to five years are really important for getting broadband built out.
We do not have any indication that the lack of broadband directly affects elections. There may be less access to information about candidates that people would otherwise find on the internet, or to news surrounding an election. But the deadlines, dates, and sample ballots are all published in at least one newspaper in every one of our 55 counties and are available in each county clerk’s office and online during the election cycle.
Even without the internet, folks can get the information they need through the newspaper. If they do not have a subscription, they can run into town and get one if they want one.
You visited all 55 county clerks. What did you learn from being on the ground that you would not have learned from Charleston?
Sec. Warner: That was a great experience. I had been to every county twice before in other jobs I held in the state. But going into every county courthouse and visiting the county clerks’ offices was different.
It is one thing to call a county clerk and say, “How are things going? Are you ready for the next election? How is the statewide voter registration system?” They are elected leaders, and I think they are going to provide a level of proper decorum. They may not want to tell the secretary of state negative things.
But when I went into the clerks’ offices, I would ask the county clerks, in front of their election division staff, “What recommendations do you have?”
Normally, the county clerks would mention specific names of employees from our office who are working on solutions, which was good because it showed a high level of communication.
But occasionally, and I think it was on one of the first three visits to county courthouses, a staff member said, “Well, if you want to sit down right here, I will show you exactly what is wrong. I should not have to use multiple screens and pull information from this side to that side and go back and forth.”
You really get to hear it straight from the election staff. They do not sugar coat anything. You hear the raw information you need so you can come back to the office and make the changes that need to be made.
We now have a new statewide voter registration system and a new campaign finance reporting system, to the tune of about $2.5 million. We are hearing nothing but rave reviews from the clerks and, more importantly, from the election staff who work on those systems every day. That is one of the things I picked up.
We have talked to other secretaries of state about this, but the federal government has asked states, including West Virginia, for voter registration data. What exactly was requested, and what is West Virginia’s position? From a federalism perspective, what is the issue?
Sec. Warner: You are exactly right. At the National Association of Secretaries of State meetings, there is a wide range of views about when the Department of Justice asks for information.
First, I would tell you that I am not going to comment on ongoing litigation. But what I can say is that this has already been reported or published through our office: The Department of Justice in Washington requested private information on our 1.2 million West Virginia voters, and they wanted it unredacted. They wanted Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.
The data we have include other information, too, such as voters who have provided a cellphone number or email address. West Virginia law is very clear that I am not to share any that information. There is no carveout or exception because the Department of Justice made the request.
So, in answering your question, I would say it is a simple position: I am following the law. The Constitution says the time, manner, and place of elections are left to the states. Our state law, set out by the Legislature, says I am not going to share that information.
Where do you see the proper balance between legitimate federal oversight of elections and protecting state authority, local control, and voter privacy? Where is the federal government helpful to West Virginia when it comes to elections?
Sec. Warner: I will tell you first where the federal government is most helpful: when it stays in Washington, D.C.
But then the question is, what do you see as legitimate federal oversight? I think Congress has the power, through the U.S. Constitution, to prescribe national standards for federal election administration, and it has done so on numerous occasions.
We have the Help America Vote Act, which was designed to ensure that voting is accessible for voters living with disabilities. We have the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which was created to ensure that our soldiers and citizens overseas have the ability and opportunity to vote when they are not stateside.
A third example would be the National Voter Registration Act, which made sweeping reforms related to access to voting, fairness and uniformity across states, voter registration activities, and list maintenance.
However, areas not specifically regulated by Congress are left to the states under the Constitution.
Switching gears to rural America more broadly, many West Virginians are wrestling with the same questions facing rural communities across the country: how to keep young people, build economic opportunity, and preserve local identity and culture. What do you think West Virginia’s biggest challenge is, and what civic habits or strengths help the state meet that challenge?
Sec. Warner: Something we have been fighting since 1950 is population loss. There were two or three years, when I was at the West Virginia Economic Development Authority under Gov. Jim Justice, when we increased population. But for the most part, we have lost population.
So part of the challenge is keeping our young people in West Virginia and encouraging them to participate in the process.
A couple of things we have done are the Young Entrepreneur Business Waiver program and the West Virginia Office of Entrepreneurship. Those help with retaining young people.
The Young Entrepreneur Business Waiver is for anyone under the age of 30 starting a new business. They are not going to pay registration fees. The West Virginia Office of Entrepreneurship is another step. There are seven other states that have those offices, but we will be the first in the nation with one that reports directly to an elected official. I am honored that both the Legislature and the governor placed that office here in the Secretary of State’s Office.
I think we are going to be able to do a number of things with that office, from streamlining government processes to providing and coordinating public and private resources. Basically, what used to take two and a half weeks to start a new business in West Virginia now takes about two hours.
But that raises the question: When someone steps out on the sidewalk after starting a business, or starts one from home online, what is next? We are going to help answer that question and work with the smallest of small businesses, including young people starting their own businesses so they can stay in West Virginia. We are excited about that.
One of the things we passed through the Legislature this last session allows 16- and 17-year-olds to be trained as poll workers even before they are able to vote. That is new, and we are excited about the opportunities there.
I stepped into a polling place during this primary election, and the first two people I saw were high school students we had worked with through the Jennings Randolph Award Program. That program is named after West Virginia’s own Sen. Jennings Randolph, who fought for 29 years to allow 18, 19, and 20-year-olds the right to vote. Prior to 1971, you had to be 21 years old to vote.
We go into high schools and award senior classes that have registered more than 85% of their class. They receive the Jennings Randolph Award. If they register 100% of their senior class, they receive the Jennings Randolph Gold Award.
This last year, we also started the “I voted” sticker contest. Everybody gets an “I voted” sticker when they leave the polls. We allowed eighth graders across the state to submit their artwork. We put the contest on social media, and more than 1,100 eighth graders submitted artwork. We had countywide winners, regional winners, and then a statewide winner. It allowed eighth graders to become involved and realize that when you vote, you get an “I voted” sticker. We had 15,974 people vote on the winner.
When you think about your own career, what is something you are proud of that may not have made headlines, but mattered to the people you were serving?
Sec. Warner: Something I am proud of that may not have ever really hit the headlines is my involvement in bringing competition to West Virginia politics.
I was elected as a county chairman back in 1998, and I was elected state chairman of the Republican Party in 2000. In the early 2000s, I was chairman for five years. I realized very quickly after the first election that we could not get people to contribute money to the party because there were no candidates on the ballot.
We had a one-party state: 93 Democrats in the House of Delegates and seven Republicans, and then 31 Democrats in the Senate and three Republicans. Every statewide office on the Board of Public Works was held by Democrats. The federal offices were all held by Democrats.
I realized that if people were going to give money, we had to have good candidates. It was a chicken-or-egg thing. So I laid out for the staff at the Republican Party that we were going to challenge every legislative race across the state: all 100 House seats and the 17 state Senate seats that come up every election.
It was literally crisscrossing the state, going to people’s homes, and getting them to sign up to be candidates, just so we could show folks who might contribute that we were going to compete.
That effort carried on. Finally, in 2014, the state flipped, and Republicans gained control of the House of Delegates and the state Senate.
At the time, I just wanted to see competition of ideas, and that was the way to do it. I am proud of my five years as state party chairman of what was then the minority party because we helped bring competition to the system.
I love traditional bluegrass music and the mountains, and every time I drive through West Virginia, I’m struck by the beauty of the state. But there is also a lonesome, contemplative quality to it. I mean that as a positive. It pushes you into reflection. Does that resonate with you?
Sec. Warner: You mentioned being in North Carolina, and your experiences in Kentucky, so I know you get Appalachia.
Often, though, we get folks who are not from Appalachia. They are from the big city, and when you say “lonesome,” they think of isolation. They think of being solitary or stuck in Appalachia because it is so remote.
But we choose this life. You go all the way back to 1863, when we separated from Virginia. The Latin phrase at the bottom of our state seal, of which I am the keeper by law, and on our state flag is “Montani Semper Liberi” — “Mountaineers Are Always Free.”
It speaks to our heritage, our strength, the resilience of our people, and our independence. I think of West Virginians as having a rugged individualism, but it is who we are.
I am not surprised, but it is amusing when someone moves here from the big city. We have an A-frame up in Barbour County that we rented to a guy from New York. He said, “I just can’t raise my kids anymore in New York City. We’re getting out.” They moved to West Virginia and rented this A-frame.
The first question he asked was, “Where’s the lawn service?” Then, no kidding, all in one conversation, he asked, “Where’s the lawn service? Where do I get the snowplowing service? Who does that?” In the city, it was just done for him.
I said, “Well, you find a neighbor kid who has a lawn mower, and he will mow your grass for you. You look around, and you will find somebody with a snowplow on the front of his pickup truck.”
He said, “So that’s not done for us?” And it was like, no. If you do not have your own, you can go get your own lawn mower or your own plow to put on the front of your vehicle. But if you do not want to do that, you can pay someone locally to do it.
I think some people believe that if we are here, we are stripped of all these niceties. No, it is the life we have chosen. We do things ourselves. We rely on family members and neighbors. That is who we are as West Virginians. We separated from the flatlanders of Virginia for a reason.
That independence also seems connected to West Virginia’s natural resources and energy history. The coal industry brought hard work, but it also helped many people provide for their families. How do you think about the state’s resources and the opportunity still ahead?
Sec. Warner: I will never forget traveling to Taiwan. I think it was 2014, Ray, and I got separated from the delegation. They said, “We need the representative from West Virginia to come sit down.”
I thought, “I do not like the idea that, in the first two hours of being in the country, they are separating me from the rest of my delegation.”
I walked into this cinder-block room with no windows, and the guy threw up his hands and said, “You have it all.”
I said, “What do you mean, we’ve got it all?”
He said, “You’ve got coal, oil, gas. You even have timber and running water. We have none of those.”
He said, “We have to find a way to compress natural gas, ship it here, decompress it, and provide energy.”
And we do. We have it all. We probably do not use it the way we could. You can build a facility in West Virginia and drill and have your own natural gas if someone else does not already own those rights.
We have coal. We are shipping coal. There is some oil that goes along with the natural gas. There are people who love to cut their own firewood and use the timber here. We have every source imaginable.
We need to draw more manufacturing and industry here to use the resources that are below our feet.
