Citizens for West Virginia Election Integrity Calls for Urgent Reforms to Safeguard State Elections

Citizen-Led Initiative Proposes Bold Reforms to Ensure Fair Voting, Prevent Fraud, and Set a New National Gold Standard for Election Integrity

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Feb. 4, 2025 - PRLog -- Citizens for West Virginia Election Integrity (C4WVEI) is calling for immediate reforms to protect election integrity across the state in order to provide full transparency and security in our elections. Founded in late 2023, this volunteer-driven organization seeks to improve public trust by advocating for legislative actions that ensure all votes are legally cast, transparently and accurately counted, and fully auditable. By collaborating with state election officials and lawmakers, C4WVEI is committed to making West Virginia a national leader in election transparency and fairness.  Based in part on C4WVEI efforts, the West Virginia Legislature has now established an Election Integrity Caucus that is actively addressing these issues.  C4WVEI has also established a Registration Audit Center to help election officials purge invalid records from our Voter Registration database.

Full Transparency is Key

C4WVEI demands full transparency in our elections through a redesign of the process.  Citizens feel that there is currently insufficient transparency in our elections, enabling corrupt organizations to manipulate the process and unfairly "select" their preferred winning candidate, thereby bypassing and undermining fair election practices (6).  To address this, many prominent American citizens in both political parties have come out in favor of eliminating machine tabulation and requiring photo ID, among other important factors.  Although there are many keys to achieving full transparency, two areas that demand transparency are 1) registration and 2) tabulation.  All of us generally trust our checking accounts because we can see a statement of individual transactions and their effect on the adjusted balance – we need the same transparency in our election tabulation process.  We also need to verify that the choices we submit to the ballot box are maintained throughout the system.

Urgency of the Situation

Several recent scientific surveys document that a majority of U.S. citizens currently distrust our election process (1,2). Reports indicate that 20% of mail-in voters in the 2020 election admitted to engaging in voter fraud (3).  Voting machine vulnerabilities are identified in the 2020 film "Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections" and other more recent videos.  According to a June, 2024 survey, 66% of voters believed the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election would be affected by cheating (4).  Also, citizens have serious concerns about non-citizens voting and efforts to register illegal voters further emphasize the need for these reforms (5).

Identified Vulnerabilities

C4WVEI has identified multiple vulnerabilities in the state's election processes.  We are working with the WV Secretary of State's office, the WV Legislature, and county election officials to address these issues. The focus areas include voter registration and canvassing, strengthening voter ID requirements, ensuring trusted vote intake and tabulation practices, auditable vote counting, and accurate reporting of results to voters.

Proposed Legislative Reforms

We are actively engaged with members of the West Virginia Legislature's Election Integrity Caucus to introduce vital election integrity measures that promote transparency and citizen trust.  C4WVEI priority issues include:

• Government-issued photo ID required for in-person and absentee voting
• Citizenship verification for voters
• Citizen audit of their own vote: Allow voter to anonymously see their cast ballot image online and compare with a photo of that ballot submitted in the precinct
• Citizen audit of any precinct race: Allow any citizen to audit precinct vote totals against precinct cast ballot images
• Transparent tabulation – allow citizens to see each transaction during tabulation similar to a bank statement showing how each transaction adjusts the account balance – one way to do this is hand-counted paper ballots by small population precinct, with public representatives present and an audit recording of the count (similar to recent trusted caucus procedures in states such as Iowa)
• Use of blue ballpoint pens for paper ballot marking and signatures
• Continued support for voters with disabilities
• Elimination of ANY possibility of hacking by bad foreign or domestic computer experts
• Public availability of Cast Vote Records from elections
• Verifiable ballot chain of custody
• Minimize early voting to prevent early knowledge of voting trends that can be used by party representatives to game the election
• Ensure that absentee voting is only for cause so as to mitigate ballot fraud
• Tighten registration rules for non-domestic voters
• Ban on unsolicited third-party distribution of absentee ballots
• Same-day/12-hour voting result availability
• Forensic audits for suspicious activity
• Conduct "door-to-door" registration canvass before each election to ensure validity of voters in the registration database
• Prohibition of Ranked Choice Voting

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