With the midterm election just six weeks away, West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner is highlighting voter registration. It’s part of a push to increase awareness on National Voter Registration Day.
With September designated as National Voter Registration Month, Warner’s office has been encouraging residents to register to vote and check their voter registration status.
To mark National Voter Registration Day on Tuesday, state election officials traveled to three West Virginia high schools -- Cabell Midland (Cabell County), Hurricane (Putnam County) and George Washington (Kanawha County) -- with Miss Teen International 2018 to encourage would-be student voters to get registered.
This year’s Miss Teen International is 18-year-old Georgia Clark of Dothan, Alabama. She won the pageant at the Clay Center in Charleston, West Virginia in July and has returned to help the Secretary of State’s office encourage voter registration. During the pageant, Clark outlined a platform emphasizing the civic engagement of young people.
“We are excited about Miss Clark’s return to West Virginia. And to have her here on National Voter Registration Day emphasizes our focus on encouraging young adults to register to vote,” Secretary Warner said in a news release.
Earlier this month, the Secretary of State’s office announced it had removed more than 100,000 outdated files from the state’s voter registration lists during the past 19 months. Those removals include outdated, duplicate, deceased and convicted felon voter registrations.
“People should not be concerned over this. In fact, I think that folks in West Virginia -- now more than ever -- can have more confidence in the integrity of the election and the results ascertained therefrom," said elections division director Deak Kersey. "Mainly because with those 100,000 cancellations came 78,000 new registrations."
Of those 78,000 news registrations, more than 22,000 have come from high school students, according to a news release last week from the Secretary of State’s office.
Voter registration information is available at govotewv.com.
Election Day for the 2018 midterms is November 6. The deadline to register to vote in this election is October 16.
