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PARKERSBURG -- The canvass of Tuesday's general election returns will be held on Monday.
The Wood County Commission will review 383 provisional ballots during the canvassing process which will start at 9 a.m.
County Clerk Mark Rhodes said clerks will hand count three randomly picked voting precincts. They will also randomly pull one of the early voting machines and conduct a hand count of those results.
Each voting machine used by the county has a paper printout of each ballot cast in the election. Those will be compared and matched to the computer count before the election results are certified.
''We do this to make sure everything balances out,'' Rhodes said.
Commissioners will review the provisional ballots and see which ones will be added to the final vote counts. They could also add any remaining absentee ballots that are postmarked Nov. 8.
One race, for Parkersburg City Council District 4, could be impacted by the canvass. Democrat Eric Barber led Republican John Sandy by 12 votes and there will be 19 provisional ballots that could impact that race.
The circumstances of a ballot being challenged is the voter is not in the poll books. They may have moved, but they did not update their voter registration. They can vote a provisional ballot and it can be determined, through review, if they are legally able to vote there. If they are, the vote will be counted.
Other times, a voter registration is handled when someone renews their driver's license and all of the paperwork is not processed in a timely manner. It is a matter of checking with the DMV to make sure everything is in order.
Some provisional ballots were cast by people who had not voted in years, let their voter registration expire and showed up at the polls wanting to vote.
''We are going to be spending the next couple of days working through all of these things so the commissioners can make an informed decision,'' Rhodes said.