By Stephen Smoot
For two terms, Mac Warner applied his military and other experience guiding Afghanistan’s elections to make West Virginia contests both more secure and more efficient for those legally allowed to cast votes.
Mac Warner ran unsuccessfully for Governor in 2024, but his brother Kris seeks to continue and build on the work of his brother over the next four years.
In the government of the State of West Virginia, the Secretary of State’s office is a member of the Constitutional Board of Public Works. These are the elected Cabinet positions of the State, which include Commissioner of Agriculture, Attorney General, State Treasurer, and State Auditor.
Two main responsibilities serve as the core mission of the Secretary of State’s office, chief elections officer and chief business registrar.
Kris Warner approaches both responsibilities as two of the most critical functions in State government.
He started off by sharing what truly makes his office effective, saying “the staff that Mac has built as Secretary of State is a tremendous staff. They work well together. It makes it easier.”
Although an old hand in government in West Virginia, including a stint leading the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development office in President Donald Trump’s first term, Warner kicked off his tenure with an intention of traveling to each county to work one on one with the county clerks.
“Braxton County is the 16th county I’ve been to so far,” he shared. The goal lies in strengthening connections and relations between the State and local elections officers and learn the “things county clerks are concerned about.”
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to learn and help,” Warner added.
An immediate priority lies in shepherding through 12 bills that Warner states will strengthen election security and make business registration and assistance an even more effective and efficient process. Those bills first went into the Senate Judiciary and Government Organization committees.
One of the top legislative priorities lies in improving West Virginia’s election security through tighter and easier to enforce voter identification laws by making identification easier to get and more secure at the same time.
An unrelated bill introduced by State Senator Rupie Phillips will address the concerns about the difficulties faced by some experiencing economic challenges in getting photo identification. SB 59 would require that food stamp cards, also known as SNAP, will also function as state photo identification that will help them to vote and also reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in the food stamp program.
Registering to vote, if the Secretary of State’s favored bill passes, will do away with the need to bring different forms of paperwork that have a name and address. It will replace them with most state issued photo identifications, possibly excluding student identification issued at secondary schools or colleges and universities.
Another bill seeks to nip a potential problem in the bud before it comes to full flower and affects election integrity. Warner said that, if passed, “if AI (artificial intelligence programs) is used in an attack on a candidate, or by a PAC on an opponent, there has to be a disclaimer.”
He used the hypothetical example of a candidate using AI to create a fake image of Hillary Clinton with her arm around the shoulders of a candidate to disparage his or her image. Warner emphasized that the process would not be outlawed, but must have a clear disclaimer along the lines of the law requiring a candidate to state that he or she supports this message.
With AI generation producing very realistic photographs and videos, this will soon grow into a national problem if left unaddressed.
Dark money concerns will also be addressed in one of the proposed bills. According to Open Secrets, an election monitoring site, dark money is “spending meant to influence political outcomes where the source of the money is not disclosed.” Sometimes this comes from 501 ( c ) 4 organizations that can advocate in elections while not disclosing their donors. It could also come from shell companies or similar fronts.
The bill, if passed, will establish much lower reporting thresholds for dark money support of campaigns to add transparency to campaign finance.
Proposed legislation will also “tighten up the definition of engineering,” add clarity and restrictions to what can and cannot be done in the vicinity of a polling place and also governing use of cell phones in precincts or voting booths.
The business side will see changes as well. One will somewhat mimic the action of the Department of Government Efficiency’s work on the federal side by eliminating a significant yearly cost. Warner described how the previous procedure mandated three certified letters from the Secretary of State’s office on the dissolution of an LLC or a non profit. He has decided to reduce the certified mailing to a single letter and establish approved digital and telephone paths to contact.
This will save the office approximately $30,000 per year.
Warner has several plans to help the West Virginia One Stop Business Center serve state entrepreneurs even better. For eight years, an in person office has served Charleston. A second opened in Martinsburg two years later. More recently Clarksburg saw a facility open. Each facility, Warner says, “is strategically located” to be no more than two hours from anyone in West Virginia.
The physical locations and online portal link entrepreneurs in the Secretary of State’s office, West Virginia WorkForce, West Virginia State Tax Department and the Division of Labor.
Additionally, entrepreneurs can find help with the Small Business Development Center. Statewide, 18 business development coaches offer their experience. They can help those starting a business, trying to decide whether or not to expand, or encountering economic headwinds.
Only 20 percent of businesses, Warner estimates, seek help. Business coaches can help connect owners to resources such as the West Virginia Grant Resource Center, operated through a partnership with West Virginia University and Marshall University. Other resources include opportunities to obtain capital through USDA, the Appalachian Regional Commission, and other entities.
Warner has worked to bring expanded services, but not an expanded staff. “We have a very extremely tight budget,” he shared, saying they get $7.8 million yearly and less than 50 employees, both significantly smaller than other primary state agencies.
“Others have hundreds of employees and huge budgets,” he noted.
Warner expressed proudly some of the work done in recent years to fulfill the agency’s purpose and responsibilities. That includes 440,000 names of ineligible names removed from the voter rolls. He took care to explain that they had removed no voters, but the names of deceased, people who move out of state, and others.
This gets more efficient when the Secretary of State’s office partners up with the Division of Motor Vehicles and United States Postal Service, acquiring names of those who get licenses in other states or filed change of address forms to send mail outside of West Virginia.
Whatever service the office offers, Warner states that the goal is to continually offer and provide much more than what it is required to do.
