Ryan J. Reilly October 26, 2010, 8:55 AM

The Republican Party in West Virginia has launched a state-wide anti-voter fraud effort that includes poll workers, what they have termed ballot security teams and “Stop Voter Fraud” signs.

“We’ll be watching courthouses, county clerks, absentee ballot filing, early voting protocols, how those things are done,” Robert Cornelius of the West Virginia GOP told TPMMuckraker.

“This is strictly our effort, and we’ve put up signs now state-wide and done some releases, done some news releases trying to get folks — if they see or suspect these situations — obviously report to their local authorities but also give us a call so we can do some work to ensure that nobody in this state is disenfranchised and that every ballot is always counted,” Cornelius said.

Cornelius said that the history of the state indicated that there would be problems in southern counties of West Virginia, but said the effort for focus state-wide.

“This is certainly a problem here, and we have what we’ve termed our ballot security teams — which are made up of Republican lawyers and observers who are going to be out in a lot of these counties and have been out already,” Cornelius said. “The big worry here has been fraud, I mean southern West Virginia, it’s just par for the course, and it’s usually happened, frankly, in Democratic primaries.”

The effort includes 2,000 signs, according to the Observer newspaper.

“We are not being naïve in terms of election fraud we have had in West Virginia,” Mike Stuart, chairman of the state GOP, told the newspaper.

Republican Parties in several states like Illinois have already launched anti-voter fraud efforts, sometimes pairing with other conservative organizations and Tea Party groups. Other groups have launched their own anti-voter fraud efforts independent of the Republican Party in their state. TPMMuckraker’s full coverage here.

2010 Elections, GOP, West Virginia, voter fraud