(Capitol Notes - Graphic Illustration/MetroCreative)

The time has finally arrived! Early voting in West Virginia begins at county courthouses or other designated places Wednesday and continues until Saturday, Nov. 2, excluding Sundays.

I’m an early voter, though I do respect those who believe that one should only vote on Election Day, which is Tuesday, Nov. 5. As someone who covers the statewide elections, I’m pretty eager to get my voting done and out of the way.

I’ll be very curious to see what voter turnout looks like once we get past Nov. 5. As I reported over the weekend, Republican voter registration continues to grow, with a plurality of registered voters identifying as Republican. But having the most registered voters and having those voters head to the polls are two different things.

I’m all for people exercising their right to vote. But I want those people to WANT to vote. I also want them to be engaged. Unfortunately, most voters tend to be low-information voters who sometimes don’t even know who is on the ballot until they’re staring at it in the voting booth. It’s not like our newspapers and other media outlets are not telling you who is running and what they stand for.

My advice for people before they go to the polls is to go to GoVoteWV.com. You can find sample ballots there, find your polling place if you don’t already know it, see important dates and deadlines, track your absentee ballot if you cast one, and more. Most importantly, you can learn what your rights are when you enter early voting locations or your polling place on Nov. 5.

The elections staff of the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office manages GoVoteWV.com. They are a small staff with maybe five or six people, many with decades of experience in state elections. They are always extremely helpful. Guess what? Your local county clerk’s office is also filled with helpful people you can reach out to.

I will admit to being biased. As I’ve pointed out before, I spent one-and-a-half years as the assistant communications director and press secretary for the Secretary of State’s Office. If you are a poll worker, you’ve likely watched training videos I produced. I know how hard the Elections Division staff work, as well as our county clerks. And that work shows with how smooth out elections our in West Virginia.

So, when I see new groups form in the state promoting “election integrity,” I have to raise an eyebrow. I know our voting systems. I know the processes that take place once the polls close. I know our procedures for counting and tabulating votes, as well as the canvassing of elections. I’m also aware of the handful of criminal prosecutions that have taken place when anyone tries to mess with elections.

When I first went to work for Secretary of State Mac Warner in 2017, the mantra in the office was making it “easy to vote, hard to cheat.” More has been done in the last nearly eight years to clean up voter registration rolls of ineligible voters than any point prior. Major efforts were undertaken to improve election cybersecurity and secure the state online voter registration database. Our voting machines never so much as touch the internet and include paper ballots as backups.

But since the 2020 elections, there have been mixed signals sent, with allegations about election improprieties in other states. Some of these concerns are valid, such as concern about neighboring states changing their procedures during COVID-19. But most of the craziest of conspiracy theories have been debunked, such as votes being changed in other states, tampering with voting machines, etc.

Since then, new allegations have been pushed that the handling of the Hunter Biden laptop October surprise by the FBI, the statements of former U.S. intelligence officials at the urging of now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the laptop was Russian and the throttling of the story by social media platforms was “election interference” that caused former Republican President Donald Trump to lose the 2020 election to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

If those things are “election interference,” then so was the FBI re-opening the Hillary Clinton server investigation in 2016, the leak of the Mitt Romney “47%” private remarks in 2012, the issue of Barack Obama’s birth certificate that began in 2008 and George W. Bush’s DUI leak in 2000.

There are always efforts during elections to release damaging information and disinformation about candidates. But those things are not the same as false accusations of foreign countries hacking into machines to change votes.

And the problem with certain state chief election officials pushing the narrative that national elections are unsecure and being manipulated while trying to claim that West Virginia election integrity is great is that certain people are now doubting the integrity of West Virginia’s election ecosystem too. And that doubt could affect voter turnout and also result in efforts by some lawmakers to pass laws that could make it harder for West Virginians to vote.

As we head into early voting and Election Day, we should be cheering our state and local election officials, not casting doubt on the integrity of West Virginia’s elections.

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com