West Virginia elected official pushes back on President Trump’s vow to change electoral process

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WOWK) — In a recent post on Truth Social, United States President Donald Trump outlined plans to sign an executive order that would put an end to mail-in voting and the use of electronic voting machines in an attempt to ensure elections are “honest and fair.”

President Trump claims that using paper ballots is “faster,” cheaper, and “leaves no doubt as to who won and who lost elections.” However, former West Virginia Secretary of State, current Kanawha County Commissioner and former WBOY anchor Natalie Tennant said that Trump does not have the power to implement these changes.

“He cannot use an executive order to tell a state what to do. He can only use an executive order to tell a federal agency what to do. So all of this boastfulness and bruhaha is for not. It’s trying to scare people, and it’s trying to make people uncertain and not trusting of our election process,” Commissioner Tennant said.

Commissioner Tennant also combated President Trump’s claims that using paper ballots is a faster and more accurate way to count votes.

“What happens when you have a paper ballot, you have a lot of paper that a lot of hands are going to have to touch. When you go through, there is research after research that shows that hand counting, human hand counting, is not as accurate as having a machine count,” said Tennant.

Commissioner Tennant added that she feels like President Trump is trying to divide the public with this proposed Executive Order.

“This is just a big show to cause people to go against each other. The county clerk, our friends and neighbors who we’ve been trusting all along, now you’re going to question them because you want to change it to a paper ballot that will cause results to come later and later and later,” said Tennant. “We can’t allow that to happen, that’s why I’m standing up and saying I’m not going to accept that I, as a county commissioner, or the county clerk or even the rest of the counties, have to accept an executive order from a president when he doesn’t have authority over us.”

In 2024, 18 counties reported a shortage of poll workers for the primary elections. Commissioner Tenant said that if West Virginia does decide to comply with the Executive Order, it would need to have double the number of poll workers to ensure that election results aren’t delayed.

“We’ll need double the amount of poll workers. Because human beings can’t be expected to be accurate after 13, 14, 15 hours of work, to then look at a piece of paper and count, so you’d need double the poll workers to come in, and be their relief to count ballots,” said Commissioner Tenant.

President Trump has not yet signed the Executive Order, but said that he plans on implementing these changes before the 2026 elections.