KEYSER - At least three people have filed complaints with the West Virginia State Republican Executive Committee about an alleged impropriety in the manner in which Mineral County's at-large delegates to the state Republican Presidential Convention were chosen.

In compliance with changes this year in the way the Republican party chooses its delegates, the Mineral County Republican Executive Committee held a caucus on Saturday to elect 13 at-large delegates.

At that time, members of the party were to vote for up to 13 at-large delegates who would join members of the county's executive committee, members of the state executive committee and Republican legislators to choose West Virginia's Republican presidential candidate at the state convention scheduled for Feb. 5 in Charleston.

According to party member Lauren Ellifritz, who was assisting with the election, 18 people had filed to be on the ballot. When the list of candidates arrived from the state committee, however, two names were flagged as ineligible.

"Charles Ronnenberg was not on the list of registered voters, and we could not find a Cheri Cannon on the voter registration anywhere," she said.

The two names were therefore crossed off the ballot, which had already been printed.

According to party chairman Bob Harman, Ronnenberg is a registered Independent and they later learned that Cheri Cannon was a misprint of Charlotte (Cheri) Gannon's name.

"I was instructed by the state that if they were not registered Republicans, they were to be removed from the ballots," said Sara Geis, executive committee secretary.

"We exed out the names and noted beside them that they were not a registered Republican," Ellifritz said.

Harman said it was not until after approximately eight people voted, using the ballot with the crossed out names, that the state called back and directed them to put the names back on the ballot.

"They said leave them on the ballot and the election committee will take care of it," he said.

It was at this point that party members Gannon, Stephen Smoot and Cheri Alt began to question the process.

"It all just seemed very irregular to me," Smoot said, noting that once the two names were placed back on the ballot, the people who had already voted were called to see if they wished to change their vote.

"They called me to see if it affected my vote, and I said yes," Alt said.

She said they did not, however, ask her how her vote would have changed.

"They could have asked me to come back down and vote, but they didn't," she said. "How did they know who I would have voted for?

"To me, that's ballot tampering and they tainted the whole election by changing the ballots in the middle."

Ellifritz said when members of the committee called the people who had already voted, "seven said no it would't have affected their vote, one said it would have, and one person we could not get hold of."

Harman said they therefore decided just to give two extra votes - one from Alt and one from the person they could not reach - to the two candidates in question. No votes were removed from any of the names.

"The only thing at that point that we could do was to give them benefit of the doubt," he said.

Smoot said he feels, however, it was not the proper way to handle the situation.

"We're in the serious business of trying to select the next president of the United States, and this just wasn't right," he said.

Harman alleges, however, that the process of getting people on the ballot was not done properly from the beginning, with one member in particular turning in candidacy papers for her relatives. He is considering filing a counter-complaint.

He also does not understand why the state committee did not verify all the names before sending them to the county committee.

According to Bob Fish, CEO of the West Virginia Republican Presidential Convention, state party officials will "look into any of the issues that have come up" as quickly as possible.

He declined to comment any further on the complaints.

Gary Howell, who is on the state convention election commission, also declined to comment, saying he has recused (excused) himself from the situation.

"I have not seen Mineral County's vote in any shape or form," he said.

Contact Liz Beavers at lbeavers@times-news.com.