Today is Election Day in West Virginia.
Okay, it’s not THE Election Day, but it is the first day of the early voting period that runs through November 3rd. Some counties have just one location—often the courthouse—but others have three or four. There are 84 early voting polling places in the 55 counties. Here is the list and locations.
Early voting is still relatively new in West Virginia but it has caught on quickly.
Here is what we know based on figures provided by Brittany Westfall, the SVRS Data Coordinator in the WVSOS Office.
The first early voting period was for the 2002 Primary Election and just 14,522 voters took advantage of the opportunity. That represented only six percent of all those who voted in that election.
The numbers have grown steadily with every election. In the 2012 General Election, over 150,000 West Virginians, or one out of every five voters, cast their ballots before the actual Election Day. In this year’s May Primary, one in four voters—24 percent—voted early.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission reports that the number of in-person early voters has increased from 25 million in 2004 to over 57 million in the last General Election.
In 2016, sixteen states had more than 50 percent of ballots cast by early voting, mail or absentee ballot. Colorado, Oregon and Washington have the highest rates because they allow voting by mail.
Early voting is not for everyone. Some like the tradition of going to their local polling place on Election Day, while others want to make sure there is no late campaign surprise that might alter their vote.
But University of Florida Associate Professor Michael McDonald, who studies elections, says the trend is unmistakable.
“Since the early 1990s, the number of voters who cast their ballots prior to Election Day has steadily risen from less than a tenth to about a third,” he wrote in 2017.
“The rise is fueled by two phenomena–more states are offering early voting options, and once a state adopts early voting, more people vote early as a part of their election regimen.”
Early voting also signals that we’re near the end of increasingly long and often bitter campaigns. Weary voters can start today casting their ballots and be done with it all and wait for the results on election night.