CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Nearly 170,000 residents on the West Virginia voter rolls will get a verification request from Secretary of State Mac Warner soon.

Warner said the postcards will arrive during the next two weeks.

“This is required by law, both federal and state law. This is the routine cleaning up of the voter registration list,” Warner said Thursday on WAJR’s Talk of the Town. “This is done to maintain confidence in the integrity of our elections.”

The status of voters will remain active if their postcards are returned. If a post card is undeliverable or not returned the voter will become inactive. Even inactive voters will be allowed to vote in the next two federal election cycles. If the registration is not confirmed after that it will be removed from the rolls.

“Check that you are still at that address or you can update your address on the card,” Warner said. “You can scan the card, there’s a QR code and send it in electronically. We just make as easy as possible for people to verify that people are still at that address or at a new address inside West Virginia.”

Clerks across the state have recently verified about 364,000 registrations as inactive and have registered more than 255,000 new voters. Warner said the task is to ensure security and accuracy.

“It’s required by law, but it’s part of the process to make sure our voter rolls are accurate,” Warner said.  “We’ve got a very important primary in May and it’s very important those voter rolls are as accurate as possible.”

Officials try to keep the process as simple as possible so as many people as possible can participate in the voting process.

“Govotewv.com and the first button says register to vote or update your registration. It’s really pretty easy to do that,” Warner said.

People who have voted or verified information at a BMV will not even receive the request.

“Most people won’t receive this. Most people voted or updated in the last four or five years at the DMW so most people won’t get this,” Warner said.

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