PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — Wood County Clerk Mark Rhodes was only able to open seven of 68 voting precincts for the June primary election but he said Tuesday plans are to have all precincts open for the Nov. 3 General Election.
Rhodes had difficulty finding locations for polling places and poll workers for the June vote which was pushed back from May because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He told MetroNews it’s been different this cycle.
“We’ve had to move a couple of precincts just because the availability of the space but we currently have enough poll workers that we should be able to man all of the precincts in the general election.”
Rhodes said both the Wood County Republican and Democratic executive committees have worked with his office to recruit enough poll workers.
The Harrison County Clerk’s Office is a busy place these days with less than five weeks to go before election day. Clerk Susan Thomas said her county has had more than 4,600 voters request a mail-in absentee ballot. She said they are turning those requests around pretty quickly. Thomas said they won’t have as many mail-in ballots as the June primary.
“We sent out a little more than 12,000 ballots (for the June vote) and got a little over 10,000 back,” Thomas said. “I envision (for this election) we’ll have about 6,000 (ballots).”
Thomas said the primary process where all registered voters were sent an absentee application and the general election process where an application has to be requested have both worked fine. Thomas said the important thing is the application.
“The last time we mailed them out we probably got at least 15,000 applications back. The addresses had changed, people had moved and they couldn’t be forwarded. For whatever reason, that’s a lot of mailings to get back,” Thomas said.
According to the Secretary of State’s Office, as of Tuesday 94,413 votes had requested mail-in absentee ballots with 94% of those requests processed and a ballot sent out. More than 10% of the registered voters in Kanawha, Jefferson, Harrison and Monongalia counties have thus far requested mail-in absentee ballots. Clerks in Mingo and McDowell counties are reporting just more than 1% of registered voters have applied for mail-in ballots.
Ballots can be requested through the Secretary of State’s online portal or by calling the county clerk in the voter’s county. The deadline to request an absentee ballot is Oct. 28. Rhodes predicted the online portal would get busy in the days approaching the deadline.
A directory of county clerks is listed at GoVoteWV.com. Voters can call 304-558-6000 for assistance.
The last day to register to vote is West Virginia is Oct. 13.