HINTON, WV (WOAY) – Secretary of State Mac Warner visited the Summers County Courthouse in Hinton this afternoon.
Absentee ballot registration in West Virginia opened up this week. So far, Secretary Warner is happy about the early numbers.
“It’s been working out great,” Warner said. “Over 9,000 people have already used it and it’s only been for two or three days now. It’s showing that it is an easy process. People are taking advantage of it. The key point is that everyone in West Virginia that wants to vote in absentee, if they have the COVID-19 concern, can do so. All they have is go to govotewv.com”
Following the primaries, changes were made in order to make absentee registration more effective.
“The main thing is listening to the clerks,” Warner said. “What they wanted after the primary was there was issues with the legibility on the handwritten applications. There was also a lot of waste. Over one million of those applications went out that nobody used. So why duplicate that process? We’re using technology. This is the first in the United States where people are using this kind of portal to request absentee ballots.”
Amid concerns over the legitimacy of absentee voting, Secretary Warner emphasized measures that are continually being taken to solidify the process.
“When you use the absentee voting process, which is voting using the mail, there are more opportunities for fraud, irregularities, mistakes to be made,” Warner said. “That’s one of the reasons why we implemented the portal is it reduced half of those human touches of the applications and the ballots. It’s now down electronically, so we’ve removed half of those opportunities.”
Warner is confident in the election process ahead of the November 3rd general election.
