MORGANTOWN — Secretary of state candidates Thornton Cooper and Kris Warner met with The Dominion Post Editorial Board to field some questions on the issues affecting the office. Here are some highlights.
Cooper, a Democrat, chairs the South Charleston party committee. He’s an attorney and activist, a former state employee, and said he’s been advising the secretary’s office since 1981, sometimes suing the office on various matters.
“I know an awful lot about what the secretary of state’s office does,” he said. He noted a point that cropped up several times for both candidates: the limits of the office. “We don’t make the laws; we carry out the laws other people make.”
Warner, a Republican, raised his family with his wife, Joyce, in Morgantown, where he worked in real estate, property management and other businesses. During the Trump administration, he served as USDA state director for Rural Development, based in the Sabraton office. Now he is executive director of the state Economic Development Authority.
Their first question was on how to make voting easier and increase turnout.
Warner said that’s beyond the scope of the office. “The secretary of state’s job is to make sure that it’s fair and equal for everyone to be able to register to vote, to be able to cast their vote, and to make sure that the county process [works].”
Increasing turnout is up to the candidates and parties motivating people to vote.
Cooper said he has an idea, but it would require legislative action to make it easier to vote. We already have same-day and early voting, he said, we need no-excuse vote by mail, like California and some other states have.
“That would certainly, I believe, increase voter turnout.”
The office also oversees business registrations, and they were asked about encouraging entrepreneurship.
Cooper said current business procedures in place work pretty well. The main problems lie elsewhere: under-capitalization, lack of business plans, workforce challenges. “I think the secretary of state’s office is already working pretty well.”
Warner said he would open an office of entrepreneurship within WV One Stop Business Portal. It would require no additional staff, just some cross training.
In addition to what the office already does, he said, it would help entrepreneurs jump-start their growth and sustainability and reduce the impacts of the learning curve.
They were asked if voter fraud is a problem.
Warner said, “I think, absolutely, that there is the opportunity for fraud.” The current secretary, Mac Warner, removed 400,000 names from voter rolls.
The office must remove convicted felons’ names, process change of address forms and remove names of people who’ve changed their names or moved away, and test voting equipment.
Cooper said, “I think that vote fraud is extremely rare.” It wasn’t in previous decades, especially the 50s-70s, when vote buying was common, he noted, but now there are measures in place.
He’s more for making it easier to vote than hard to vote, he said, but if someone votes twice, “I’m for throwing the book at the person.”
They also took a question on voting rights for convicted felons.
Cooper said Vermont goes too far, in allowing incarcerated felons to vote. Here, the Hazelton person would make up a formidable voting block.
But, “I’m not for putting a stigma on a person for the rest of his or her life.” When they’re released, restoring their rights can help their reintegration into society, he said.
Warner said, “It’s not a matter what I think, as this is what the West Virginia Legislature has laid out.”
Their rights are restored upon completion of their sentence, and he would follow the law.
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