It’s a case of he said/she said, but while Secretary of State Mac Warner’s office and Monongalia County Clerk Carye Blaney’s office point fingers at each other, voters are left in the lurch.
In one personal experience shared with the Editorial Board, an individual had difficulty using the new voting portal because it wouldn’t recognize their driver’s license number but wouldn’t allow for alternative forms of verification. A call to the Secretary of State’s office pointed to the issue being with the county clerk’s office; a call to the county clerk pointed to the problem being on the secretary of state’s end, a “known problem.” A request for follow-up assistance was never granted, but two weeks later, calling of their own accord, the person found out a clerical error had their license number recorded incorrectly in the system.
Another individual emailed a request to the Mon County clerk, requesting an application for an absentee ballot be mailed to their address. An email bearing Carye Blaney’s signature line told the individual they had to go through the new voting portal. The individual in question is elderly and while tech-savvy enough to send an email, did not feel comfortable using the portal and its multiple options and screens. This individual took the clerk’s response as a refusal to send them an application. A helper in the voter registration office at the county clerk’s said they’ve been directed by the secretary of state to route everyone through the portal first.
Yet another individual started the portal application request process, but stopped when they got to the signature page. Users have to draw their signature in a box, and this has to match the signature on file in order to confirm the application. Anyone who has ever signed a PIN pad at a store knows your electronic signature rarely looks like your pen-and-ink signature. It’s even worse if you’re using a mouse to write. While it makes sense that voters need to sign their application, creating an accurate online signature is a daunting — if not futile — task. Will legitimate applications be denied because of this?
These are just three specific issues we were alerted to. How many other people experienced similar issues? How many other issues are there that we just don’t know about?
The Secretary of State and the Monongalia County Clerk need to get on the same page — or at least get their stories straight.
Absentee ballots are supposed to be mailed on Sept. 18 to those who successfully applied. (Track your ballot application and ballot at GoVoteWV.com.) But if you submitted an electronic application and got rejected, can you request an application another way? Like by calling the county clerk? Or do you no longer qualify for absentee voting? And voting in person is a concern, not just because of COVID-19, but because of a shortage of poll workers. Without workers to staff them, not all polling locations will be able to open — which makes absentee voting all the more essential.
We get it — the pandemic has derailed everything. We have to find creative solutions and there’s a whole lot of trial and error. What the state did for the primary election worked. What the state is doing now? Not so much.
