State Official Confident Of Election Security But ‘Open’ To Any Federal Intel

Secretary of State Kris Warner said Friday he is open to any actionable intelligence from federal agencies that want to further strengthen election security across the state. 

“We’ve got an investigative team that is ready to go to work,” said Warner. “But until we have that actionable intelligence, we’re going to stay the course because elections are all about confidence, and we want as many people to be involved that want to be involved in the next election, and that’s less than four months away.” 

Warner’s remarks followed President Trump’s address to the nation Thursday night in which he laid out concerns about the security of U.S. elections and announced he was releasing evidence of what he called shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. 

“U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020, when they discovered that tens of millions of voter data -- think of that, tens of millions of voters data -- in 18 states have been bought, stolen or hacked by China,” Trump said.  

Speaking from the National Association of Secretaries of State in South Dakota, Warner said he was eager to hear about which 18 states the president was referring to, and what their vulnerabilities might be. 

“But I’ve got to tell you we have not received one phone call in West Virginia from the White House from anyone in the intelligence community, FBI, CIA, DNI, from any federal agency alerting us to a real or existing threat to our midterm 2026 general election,” Warner said.   

Mike Pushkin, chairman of the West Virginia Democratic party, said the point of Trump’s speech was to sow doubt ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. 

“Of course, we don’t want non-citizens voting in our election, but there’s absolutely no evidence to show that that is the case right now,” Pushkin said. “So, to me, it’s him sounding this false alarm to lay the groundwork for a federalization of our elections.”   

Midterm elections are scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026.