Photo provided Secretary of State Mac Warner, second from right, met with Jefferson County Clerk Jacki Shadle, middle, and her staff Monday during travel to promote National Voter Registration Month.

Photo provided
Secretary of State Mac Warner, second from right, met with Jefferson County Clerk Jacki Shadle, middle, and her staff Monday during travel to promote National Voter Registration Month.

CHARLESTON — As West Virginia wraps up Voter Registration Day Tuesday and with National Voter Registration Month ending Thursday, the state is celebrating its role in expanding the right to vote.

September is National Voter Registration Month, with Tuesday being National Voter Registration Day.

A partnership between secretaries of state and public/private organizations, National Voter Registration Day encourages volunteers to hit the streets and register people to vote. National Voter Registration Month was created by the National Association of Secretaries of State to educate the public about registering to vote and encourage more voter participation.

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner was appointed to the association executive board in August. Warner spent Tuesday at voter registration drives at high schools in Kanawha and Putnam counties, while spending the last few weeks visiting with county clerks and their staffs

“In West Virginia, we encourage citizens not to wait until election time to register to vote,” Warner said. “Register now. If you need to update your voter registration, you can also do that right now online.”

West Virginia residents wishing to register to vote or update their registration can do so at their local county clerk’s office. They can also register at GoVoteWV.com, the Secretary of State’s online voter information portal.

Online registrations are sent to the voter’s local county clerk, who then mails a registration card to the voter. Residents can also be registered to vote or update voter registration information automatically at their local Division of Motor Vehicles office through the state’s automatic voter registration system unless they decide to opt out.

According to the most recent records from the Secretary of State’s Office for the month of July, there are 1,124,195 registered voters in West Virginia. During Warner’s first four-year term between 2017 and 2021, 255,888 West Virginians have registered to vote with more than 67,000 new registrations coming from those aged 18.

“The first step to participating in our democracy is being registered to vote,” Warner said. “If we can encourage eligible voters to register when they’re young, they are more likely to participate regularly in our election process.”

Warner also is traveling to high schools to personally hand out Jennings Randolph Awards. The award is given to high schools with at least 85 percent of their eligible students registered to vote.

It is named for the late U.S. Sen. Jennings Randolph, a Harrison County native who served West Virginia from 1958 to 1985 in the U.S. Senate.

Randolph is the father of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting the right to vote to citizens between the ages of 18 and 20. The 26th Amendment was ratified in 1971, making 2021 the 50th anniversary for the landmark amendment.

The first 18-year-old to register to vote was Ella Mae Thompson Haddix, a student at Davis & Elkins College. Haddix is a retired school teacher in Randolph County.