MORGANTOWN, W.Va.— Election Day across the northern part of the state has been smooth and brisk, according to officials in four counties.
In Monongalia County, clerk Carye Blaney said the day started with some minor printer issues and steady turnout during the first few hours. Just over 15,000 voters came to the polls for the 2022 midterm, and she expects a new record will be set this year.
“We’ve had about 1,100 (voters) an hour,” said Blaney.
“I do expect that to increase during the 11 to 2 o’clock time period and then again from 5 o’clock to 7:30 p.m,.” Blaney said.
In Harrison County, clerk John Spires said the minor problems also involved printers. Those affected ballots were marked spoiled and replaced with ballots in the correct form, so voters were assured their choices were recorded.
“Sometimes if you pull a ballot out of the machine, if you pull it out before it’s ready to be taken from one, they can make what’s called an unreadable mark on the ballot,” said Spires. “I know I’ve heard of a couple of those this morning.”
More than 5,200 Harrison County residents cast a ballot in early beating the turnout for the same period in the 2022 midterm. Spires said poll traffic was steady there, and he expects a new high mark for voter turnout by the end of the night.
“Which kind of indicates to me, though it’s relatively early in the day, that I would assume that we’ll kind of see the trend that we’ve seen from early voting, where this will be a bigger than average midterm,” said Spires.
In Preston County, more than 2,200 early ballots were cast, and Clerk Dave Sypolt said polling places were handling a steady stream of voters. He said this election day could set a new high mark for all elections in Preston County.
“We’ve surpassed it by far,” said Sypolt on early voter turnout. “In fact, we almost matched in early voters the last presidential election.”
In Marion County, Clerk Julie Kincaid said the polls were busy, and the problems they had also involved printers. In all cases, the printers required nothing more than user-level corrections.
“We had a few equipment issues where we’ve had to go out and check our tabulators and, you know, make sure we avoided paper jams, things like that,” said Kincaid. “Thankfully nothing on the software end.”
In Monongalia County, Blaney noted the best weather for an election day she’s seen, adding that’s always one of the things they cannot control.
“We’ve not had very many election days where it didn’t rain or was inclement weather, and this is really the perfect scenario to get out and vote,” said Blaney.