West Virginia’s top election official on trust, social media and secure elections

Mac Warner is running for the Republican nomination for governor in West Virginia. Earlier this month, the secretary of state made his last appearance at the National Association of Secretaries of State Winter Conference, a largely nonpartisan affair focused on the business of running elections.

But Warner, who is entering his eighth and final year in office, used the occasion to air conspiratorial claims about the CIA and FBI at a session on cybersecurity. The secretary grabbed headlines when during the question-and-answer portion of the session, he stepped up to the mic to allege that the two agencies, along with the social media companies, covered up a story in 2020 that prevented then-President Donald Trump from winning a second term.

The claims give Warner, who served in the Army before entering politics, the distinction of being the only current sitting secretary of state to publicly embrace Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen. He repeated them in an interview with Route Fifty on the sidelines of the recent secretaries of state meeting.

But a lot has happened during Warner’s tenure, which he discussed in a wide-ranging interview. Warner talked about his decision to withdraw West Virginia from the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, cybersecurity threats, the importance of secure elections and his decision not to recuse himself from administering an election in which he is a candidate. Warner will oversee the May Republican primary for governor, where he is one of seven candidates.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Route Fifty: How have the National Association of Secretaries of State meetings evolved or changed over your several years of attending them?

Mac Warner: They certainly have changed. When I came in, it was right after the 2016 election. That was the election that brought cybersecurity to the fore. The [Obama] administration made elections critical infrastructure, and at the time, we weren't sure what the implications were. We had a unanimous resolution that we did not want elections to be named critical infrastructure because we were afraid it was federal government overreach. Then the Trump administration doubled down on it, so we knew that something was going on that we didn't know. It caused some tension. Then we decided it was time to work with them and not fight against them.

We asked the Department of Homeland Security to sponsor us for security clearances, and they did so. Then we started the classified briefings and we would feed information [on what was happening in the states] up to the federal government, but we didn't feel they were feeding information back down to us. 

All that changed, I think, with the [Iranian General Qassem Soleimani] killing. They got back to us within 24 hours and said, “Here's a situation that if the Iranians have planted worms inside your system, they might be turning it on over the weekend.” I sent our information technology guru back into the capitol, he shut some things down so we couldn't be hit in West Virginia.

The next week was very interesting. West Virginia and Colorado had some unusual traffic, it looked like somebody was trying to penetrate our systems, so we reported that back up. Again, within 24 hours or so, they got that information out to all 50 states. I think that was the first time that this system of elections being critical infrastructure worked, where the federal government was sharing information with us and then we were sharing information back. That was a groundbreaking moment for all of us.

And then of course, you get into the 2020 election. We have now seen two and three years later, the number of problems that occurred in that election. [Warner then continued on to explain his conspiracy theories about U.S. agencies interfering in the 2020 election.] 

Route Fifty: Your election in West Virginia, presumably, was just fine in 2020?

Mac Warner: We have very secure systems. In West Virginia, we've put $23 million into the latest and the best equipment. I've traveled the world and I haven't seen better equipment. You have a voter verified paper trail with this system. We do audits. 

Now, we still had a handful of convictions for double voting and voter fraud and that sort of thing, so fraud does occur, but it's not, at least in West Virginia, I haven't seen it on a massive scale.

But no fraud should be permitted. I really get irritated at the phrase, “Well, there wasn't widespread voter fraud.” It means like, OK, a little bit is OK. No, it isn't. We had probably a dozen cases or elections that were decided by a handful of votes or less…. We need to be ironclad tight on every election, and we're doing the best we can in West Virginia.

Route Fifty: What more can you do on that? Is it just a case of investing more money in systems?

Mac Warner: This election coming up will be the first time all 55 counties will have this ExpressVote [tabulation] system. That's one aspect of it. The second aspect is investigations. Every citizen now in West Virginia that's got a cellphone is an extension of our investigative unit. We have a program called “See Something, Text Something!” where if you see voter intimidation, you see fraud occurring, double voting, people campaigning where they're not supposed to, it's as simple as taking a picture or video and sending it to us.

We have five times the number of investigators that we had when I came into this. We've invested in the investigative process. The idea is not necessarily to catch people. We're trying to deter people from having the improprieties to begin with, if they know everybody can just take a picture of them. They don't know who's going to get reported. I think that has tamped down the possibilities of fraud in West Virginia.

At the same time, I have gone out personally to all 55 counties, and we have training on a regular basis. We've talked about deepfakes, we've talked about artificial intelligence, we've talked about cybersecurity threats, we've even run some tests where our chief information officer has put out some phishing exercises.

Route Fifty: What role do elected officials such as yourself and your peers play in building public trust and elections? How do you see your role in that?

Mac Warner: That's probably our No. 1 job, because the worst form of voter suppression is when somebody doesn't have confidence in the election, so they just say, “My vote doesn't count,” or “I'm going to stay home.” 

Building confidence is of utmost importance, and that's why I think it's so important with these social media companies. We're talking Google, Facebook, Twitter. I've been disappointed with their involvement to date. I think they put their thumb on the scale, and we're trying to make some corrective actions in West Virginia to keep them from favoring one side over the other. If they do favor one side over the other, then I think it should be a campaign contribution in-kind that needs to be disclosed and reported. So far, they've not been forthcoming with transparency, and I think they need to do so.

Route Fifty: So in your opinion, the actions of social media companies shift more votes than a governor, or a secretary of state or a congressional candidate coming out and saying, “Don't trust the election results”?

Mac Warner: Well, you have to look behind what they're saying, why they're not trusting [the results]. See, I don't trust it because of the social media gurus playing in this field. I don't think they're being fair, even handed. I didn't see the cheating in West Virginia, and I'm not in a position to say ballot boxes were stuffed or drop boxes were stuffed in Georgia and Wisconsin and signatures weren't checked in Michigan, and ballots came in late in Pennsylvania. I've read that in reports. But I'm not in a position to say that changed the outcome or that there was outright cheating. That's up to those states to investigate. I can say that we ran fair elections in West Virginia. But what we all need to be aware of is what's going on with social media and get that straightened out, or you don't have fair elections.

Route Fifty: Let's say someone came in and said, ‘West Virginia's doing it wrong,’ from another state, would you tell them to butt out?

Mac Warner: I'd say, show it to me, that's been my argument with all of these election frauds. Let's find the evidence. Show me. Give me that whistleblower that stuffed that ballot box in Georgia or changed that algorithm for Google or whatever. So far, I haven't seen that whistleblower, or I haven't seen the video evidence that said, this is what happened. I'm responsible for West Virginia, and I'm very confident that the system we have in place and the checks and balances we have in place are giving West Virginians a fair election.

Route Fifty: I want to shift gears a little bit. You pulled out of [the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC] and joined with several other states in a new information sharing effort. How's it going so far?

Mac Warner: Great. Sixty or 70% of your situation for somebody who moves out of state and can be registered, is with your neighbor states. With us, it's Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. As long as you form these bilateral agreements, you're going to catch 60% or 70% of those. That’s just being friendly with your neighbors. If we bring in Florida where a lot of people go, we get those numbers up even higher.

Route Fifty: ERIC has come in for some criticism from yourself and others, although we can all basically agree on the common goals. What needs to happen to these kinds of consortiums to make them better?

Mac Warner: They need to listen to their participants. And if they would listen to us and do what they say, then they wouldn't have had that mass exodus, but they promised us certain things were going to change. Then they didn't.

Route Fifty: I see you're running for governor, while also secretary of state. How are you ensuring that you're keeping that separation between the chief elections official and someone who is running in an election.

Mac Warner: My background is a military background, and I'm also a lawyer, I've been both on prosecution and defense. There have been many times in my life where you have to separate your politics from your personal beliefs, from your personal desires or whatever. I was just hit on this the other night in the debate, on why I hadn't endorsed [former President Donald] Trump. West Virginia is very favorable towards Trump, so the polite, expedient thing for me to do is endorse President Trump, but I haven't. Why is that? Because I'm the chief elections officer for the state and I can't give any appearance of impropriety to favor one over another. If I had endorsed Trump, and then there was a challenge to his election or the process in West Virginia, how am I going to rule fairly and independently? I have to get that distance.

I use the example that my wife [Del. Debbie Warner] ran for the House of Delegates, and I didn't even endorse my wife…. That shows the example of putting principle over politics. The politically expedient thing for me to do right now would be to endorse Donald Trump, and I'm just not. I've never endorsed anybody during my seven and a half years as the secretary of state, and I don't intend to change that. It's just not the right thing to do. So that's how I separate the role of secretary of state versus political office.

Route Fifty: Let's say you win the primary. You’d conceivably be on the ballot with President Trump. Does that change your thinking at all?

Mac Warner: It doesn't change. I'm still the chief elections officer. I don't plan to quit…. I use the example, what if I quit my position, Jim Justice quit as governor, Patrick Morrissey—he was the attorney general—quit his job to run for governor. John McCuskey is the state auditor and he's running for attorney general, they start quitting their jobs, just running for the next higher office. What kind of government are we going to have?

We have duties to fulfill. The people elected me to this office, and I will serve until the last day. But to your point, if I was out endorsing people and making decisions based on politics, they wouldn't want their chief election officer doing that. So that's how I keep the two separate.