Some voters having second thoughts about voting by mail

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick says she’s starting to receive some calls from voters who applied for and were sent mail-in absentee ballots for the June 9 primary election but now they would rather take advantage of in-person early voting or go to the polls on election day.

“I think people were concerned about the virus and nobody knew what was happening and they wanted to vote and they went ahead and got their ballots but they are kind of hanging on to them now,” McCormick said.

Vera McCormick

County clerks sent absentee ballot applications to all registered voters last month. The state opened up its usually restricted vote by mail provisions because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Since then, Gov. Jim Justice’s stay-at-home order has been lifted and state’s positive test rate has consistently stayed under 2 percent for last several weeks. Now, McCormick said, some voters would like to vote like they normally do.

McCormick said there’s an option that allows the ballot that was mailed to the voter to be returned and marked as a spoiled ballot.

“We will mark it spoiled and then will take their name off of the list as receiving a ballot and then when they go to vote they won’t have to vote a provisional ballot,” McCormick said, adding it’s best for a voter to call her office for instructions if that’s what they want to do.

There’s also an option that allows voters to bring their ballot to their polling place on election day and have it marked as spoiled by poll workers. They will then be given another ballot.

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of the Secretary of State’s website further explains the process.

“I received my absentee ballot, but I have not sent it in yet – can I still vote in person?”

“Yes, just bring your absentee ballot with you to the polling place to give to your poll worker. The poll worker will then “spoil” your absentee ballot and allow you to vote at the voting booth.
If you forget your absentee ballot, you may still vote in person. However, your in-person vote will be by “provisional” ballot. The county clerk’s office will simply double-check the absentee ballots received in the office prior to canvass. If your absentee ballot was not received by the county clerk, the Board of Canvassers will count your in-person vote.”

McCormick said the bottom line is residents don’t have to vote by mail.

“We have early voting going on. We have election day and we will be open at their regular precincts,” she said. “At the time when these (ballots) went out we didn’t know what was going to happen (with the pandemic).”

McCormick said whatever a voter decides to do, vote by mail or change their mind, they need to do it quickly.

The deadline for the ballot applications to be the hands of county clerks is June 3.

Gov. Jim Justice

Gov. Justice has several times used his coronavirus media briefings to urge residents to go to the polls and vote instead by mail.

“We don’t want to go by absentee,” Justice said on April 23. “All of us know, all of us know the level of potential corruption from purely absentee is rampant.”

There may be more information released next week by the U.S. Attorney’s Office concerning an “absentee ballot fraud scheme” first investigated by the West Virginia Election Fraud Task Force. The task force said Thursday it had turned the information over to federal prosecutors for review.

At the end of last week, McCormick’s office had received ballot applications from 26,771 Kanawha County voters. The office had processed applications and mailed out 24,367 ballots. There had been only 9,551 returned as of Friday morning. State code requires the mail-in ballots to be postmarked by election day to have it counted in the primary.

Information from the Secretary of State’s Office said as nearly 50 percent of Democrats who had requested a mail-in absentee ballot had returned it and nearly 35 percent of Republicans.

County clerks will allow the process the ballots that are returned prior to election day but the votes can’t be tabulated until after the polls close at 7:30 on June 9.

The state’s 10-day early voting period begins next Wednesday, May 27.





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