CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Polls are now open throughout West Virginia for early voting ahead of the Oct. 7 Special Election on the Roads to Prosperity Amendment.
Harrison County Clerk Susan Thomas was surprised of turnout for early voting Friday morning.
“I would guess maybe 10 to 15 (people), which to be honest with you is more than I expected to have by now,” Thomas said.
Registered voters in Harrison County can vote at the courthouse during its hours of 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., as well as 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays.
“I didn’t see the need to go through the expense to hire people outside and rent a place to do early voting for this election because of the turnout that I anticipate,” Thomas said.
Early voting got off to a slow start Friday morning in Kanawha County.
“We didn’t have anybody in line at eight o’clock,” Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick said. “It is kind of slow.”
McCormick reported around 100 voters had cast ballots by noon Friday. She said one issue elections that are placed on Saturdays usually produce low turnouts.
“Most of the time Saturday elections are low turnouts and anytime you have something like an amendment or a levy that’s usually a small turnout,” McCormick said. “We’ll probably be lucky if we hit 10 percent (for election day).”
In Lewis County, the courthouse is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for early voting. Saturday hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Lewis County Clerk Cindy Rowan said she isn’t expecting high turnout for the election, given that it’s a single issue ballot.
“I haven’t hear a lot of talk, although we had already had some people stop in earlier in the week ready to vote,” Rowan said. “We’ve already had about a dozen people in (Friday).
“We’ve early voted here since 2006 in the clerk’s office,” she said. “I look to have probably 30 percent turnout, somewhere in the 30 percent.”
Thomas said this election hasn’t required much preparation ahead of Friday’s start for early voting.
“This type of election, when it’s a paper election, to be honest, there is not a whole lot of upfront work to do to prepare for the election,” she said. “Just setting up the room and making sure that we have enough people and we are organized to have the voters come in and vote.”
Despite the lower workload, Thomas is concerned that there will not be enough poll workers for Election Day.
Harrison County is holding a poll worker class at 6 p.m. Sept. 28 at the Harrison County Parks and Recreation Center on Rt. 19. Interested volunteers can work as either a poll worker or poll commissioner on Election Day.
“The clerk is the one that checks to see if they are registered in our poll books that we send out to the poll place,” Thomas said. “Then there’s the commissioners that verify the numbers that are on the ballots stub and the ballot before it goes into the ballot box.”
Poll workers receive $175 for Election Day and $25 for going to the class.
MetroNews’ Jeff Jenkins contributed to this story.