West Virginians are taking advantage of absentee voting for this Primary Election in record numbers.
Due to the pandemic, every eligible voter in the state can vote absentee. Individuals can return an absentee ballot application by mail, pick up an application at the county clerk’s office or download and print the application from the Secretary of State’s website.
As of Monday, 230,899 West Virginia voters had requested absentee ballots and 221,341 ballots had been mailed to the voters. Clerks in all 55 counties have received 107,120 absentee ballots from voters as of Monday.
As a comparison, in the 2016 Primary Election, 495,000 West Virginians voted and only 6,567 were absentee ballots. Clerks have already received 16 times that number of absentee ballots for this election, and the election is still several weeks away.
Clerks will accept absentee ballots as long as they are postmarked by election day. At this pace, a third or even as many as half of all votes cast in this election could be absentee ballots.
So far, the number of returned absentee ballots represents just under nine percent of registered voters statewide. As of Monday, in six counties the number of absentee ballots cast represented at least 15 percent of the registered voters. Those counties are Braxton (16.1%), Calhoun (16.9%), Doddridge (15.9%), Lewis (15.9%), Roane (16.6%), and Tucker (18.4%).
In seven counties, less than five percent of registered voters had returned absentee ballots as of Monday. They are Hancock (1.5%), Harrison (4.0%), Logan (3.7%), McDowell (3.5%), Mineral (4.6%), Mingo (2.7%), and Wayne (4.8%).
All this absentee voting presents a unique opportunity for candidates. They can legally obtain the list of individuals who have asked for absentee ballots and then use that information to make direct contact with voters.
Conceivably, a campaign could make mass phone calls to voters on the list for a direct pitch to individuals as they mark their ballot. Technically, candidates are not allowed to offer assistance—the individual has to ask for it—but it is perfectly legal for the campaign to say, “I’d like you to mark your ballot for candidate X.”
Candidates who have organized campaigns and plenty of volunteers are best equipped to take advantage of this election anomaly.
Meanwhile, the county clerks can start organizing the ballots when they arrive and begin processing once early voting begins May 27. However, the results of those absentee and early votes cannot be tallied until after the polls close on Election Day, June 9.