By Stephen Smoot
In the November general election in West Virginia, voters will have the opportunity to reaffirm that voting rights belong only to United States citizens.
Secretary of State Kris Warner last week announced that this year’s ballot will feature proposed Amendment One, whose summary of purpose reads that “this amendment provides that in all elections held in West Virginia, only citizens of the United States who are citizens of this state are qualified to vote.” The amendment lists specifically who may or may not vote beyond the question of citizenship.
On July 17, President Donald Trump released declassified information concerning foreign government and intelligence service attempts to manipulate “serious vulnerabilities in U.S. election infrastructure.”
This includes new information about Communist China gaining access to 220 million American voter files and a Department of Homeland Security investigation that “identified 278,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.”
Also, not long after the release of information from the White House, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill shared that “I learned that a serious software error in New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System led to the registration of roughly 6,600 people who indicated they were not U.S. citizens.”
The United States Department of Justice used that announcement to reaffirm its efforts to obtain unredacted voter rolls from that state. Officials from the DoJ were recently blocked from getting the same information from West Virginia.
Earlier in July, a federal court sided with West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, saying that the DoJ offered no evidence “that West Virginia is suspected to be non compliant with the list maintenance requirements . . . nor does it point to any anomalies in West Virginia’s voter registration data.”
New Jersey’s “error” may prevent its case from being disposed of similarly.
Secretary of State Warner noted that “today’s decision . . . is an important victory for the rule of law, voter primacy, and the dedicated election officials across West Virginia who work every day to ensure the accuracy of our state’s voter registration system.”
Dating back to Betty Ireland and including predecessor Mac Warner, the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office has worked closely with county clerks to keep voting records current and purged of names that should not be there.
