Secretary of State asks for $2.5 million to upgrade voter-registration and campaign-finance systems

Secretary of State Warner and senior staff told the Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 13, 2025, that the office seeks a one-time $2.5 million appropriation to buy and implement new voter-registration and campaign-finance systems and to obtain source code access from a vendor.

“That's the 2 and a half million dollars,” Donald Kersey, chief of staff to the secretary of state, said during his presentation of the office's technology and modernization priorities. Kersey said the office has a vendor currently in breach of contract since 2019 and argued the state should own the source code for critical election systems so staff can maintain, patch and secure the systems in perpetuity.

Delilah Barker, the office's chief financial officer, provided staffing and operating details: the secretary of state's office has 52 FTEs and 50 positions filled, with two vacancies the office did not expect to fill immediately. Barker laid out overtime and expedited-fee revenue figures the office uses to support its three West Virginia One Stop business centers in Charleston, Clarksburg and Martinsburg.

Kersey said the requested funds would keep the office's special-revenue cushion intact. He described the cushion as $4.5 million in special revenue that the office relies on for infrastructure and emergency replacements. “If we don't get the money, ... we're gonna have to spend our special revenue, which takes our special revenue down from about 4 and a half million dollars a year to $2,000,000,” Kersey said.

Kersey described the office's need to maintain paper-trail voting machines and to avoid connecting voting machines to the internet; he said West Virginia law does not permit those machines to be Internet-connected and that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has expressed interest in auditing West Virginia’s system.

Committee members asked about county funding for election security, whether counties could be required to use the state P-card and whether the office could bring more technology work in-house. Kersey said counties receive a portion of property-excess tax transfers earmarked for record-room and election purposes and that most counties need assistance for equipment and training. He said bringing development fully in-house would require additional staff and infrastructure.

If the Legislature does not fund the one-time request, Kersey said the office would draw on special revenue but that doing so would reduce the cushion available for unplanned needs or a large-scale replacement should the federal government decertify equipment or new federal standards require costly updates.

The committee did not take an immediate vote on the request; the presentation was part of a sequence of agency budget hearings scheduled for the session.