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New Secretary of State Kris Warner begins 55-county tour

TOUR BEGINS – Secretary of State Kris Warner, right, and Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick talk with the press prior to meeting on the first stop of Warner’s tour to visit all 55 county clerks. -- Steven Allen Adams

CHARLESTON — In an effort to forge good relationships with the state’s 55 county clerks, Secretary of State Kris Warner began a county-by-county tour this week.

Warner held a press conference Tuesday morning prior to beginning a meeting with Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick at her office in the old Kanawha County Courthouse in Charleston.

“This is the first county clerk’s visit,” Warner said. “I plan on making it to all 55 counties, listen to the clerks and hear what is on their mind and what issues they may have. We want to do everything we can to be a resource to the county clerks. And that’s what we’re here today to do.”

Warner, the former executive director of the West Virginia Economic Development Authority and a former chairman of the state Republican Party, was elected as Secretary of State in November after winning a contested party primary last May. Warner took the oath of office Jan. 13, becoming West Virginia’s 31st secretary of state.

Warner succeeded his brother, former two-term Secretary of State Mac Warner, who declined to seek a third four-year term to run in the Republican primary for governor, losing to now-Gov. Patrick Morrisey.

Prior to Mac Warner taking office in 2017, the relationship between county clerks and the Secretary of State’s Office was rough, though Mac Warner worked to repair and improve those relationships during his first term. Secretary of State Kris Warner said Tuesday he wants to continue to build upon those foundations and ensure that his office’s relationships with county clerks remain positive.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that for the last eight years, my older brother Mac has been the secretary of state and they’ve built an excellent election integrity office of being able to help the clerks,” Kris Warner said. “We intend to further that and build upon what Mac has started over the last eight years.”

Among the many duties of the Secretary of State Office, most people know it for managing elections. The secretary serves as the chief elections officer, overseeing campaign finance reporting, candidate filings, the statewide voter registration database and investigations into election law violations. The secretary of state also is a member of the State Election Commission.

County clerks serve as the chief election officers at the local level and approve all new and updated voter registrations, manage voter rolls and remove ineligible voters, maintain voting machines, prepare ballots and train and manage poll workers.

“County clerks really do, in many ways, run elections,” Warner said. “The Secretary of State’s Office in many ways facilitates and helps out.”

“We all work well together, and we’ve never had a problem with the Secretary of State’s Office,” McCormick said. “We know that (as) long as you have good election laws and you go by those laws … we run good elections and you don’t hear bad things about West Virginia in the news. So, they’re there to help us. We’re there to work with them.”

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