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PARKERSBURG -- West Virginia county clerks reported few problems election day as a record number of voters went to the polls across the state.
Some minor equipment issues and other concerns caused minor delays as personnel were able to fix the problem or get replacement equipment. Others reported having more people show up at the polls than expected.
Wood County Clerk Mark Rhodes said some of the issues he dealt with in the county's 68 precincts involved equipment issues and dealing with poll workers who called in sick.
One issue was misplaced equipment at a precinct at VanDevender Middle School. Election equipment had been delivered there earlier this week, but the person who opened the precinct didn't immediately know where it was put. They found it and were able to get everything set up.
"We were late opening up that precinct," Rhodes said.
Also, because the county has new voting machines it took poll workers a little bit longer to get everything set up.
"The lines started at 6:30 a.m. (when the polls opened), but the lines didn't start moving through until 6:45 a.m. or so," Rhodes said. "We had a couple that were a little late in getting open."
Rhodes had some poll workers who called in sick and some of the precincts opened with four poll workers instead of five which was permissible under the state guidelines counties are operating under in relation to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Rhodes said he had to replace a ballot scanner at Greenmont School.
"The people who had voted dropped their ballots into the emergency dropbox within the scanner," he said. "Once we got the new scanner replaced and up and running, myself and one of the poll commissioners got those out and scanned those.
"We made sure the ballot totals were correct so the votes did get counted."
Otherwise, they didn't have too much out of the normal for a typical election. There were lines outside a number of the precincts Tuesday morning, some constant from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.
"After that it was pretty much a steady flow of people throughout the day," Rhodes said. "The lines were a little bit slower in the morning trying to get through. Once the poll workers got use to the new equipment, the lines moved fairly quickly."
Some of the last precincts to report in were larger turnout precincts and the workers there took the time to make sure everything balanced out and got everything closed down properly.
"They all made it and everything balanced as far as the number of people who voted compared to the number loaded onto the system."
None of the precincts had lines in place when the polls closed at 7:30 p.m. that would have caused any delays.
There were a number of people who had to vote a challenge ballot because they were not registered to vote, people who recently moved to the area who may not be registered locally. Those ballots will be reviewed by the Wood County Commission during the canvassing process starting Monday to determine if they will be counted or not.
The commission will review 387 challenged ballots, Rhodes said.
Absentee ballots are still coming in. An absentee ballot has to be postmarked on Election Day to be counted. The commission will review those as well during the canvassing process.
On Wednesday, around 125 absentee ballots arrived, he said.
"If the ballots are postmarked (for Nov. 3) we can take them up until Monday morning at 9 a.m.," Rhodes said. "We check the mail before we start the canvass on Monday morning."
Rhodes said many of the things he and his people faced were typical issues they deal with during any election.
"It was stressful with COVID, poll workers, new equipment, but everyone did their jobs," he said. "Everyone was great."
Wirt County Clerk Marolyn Baldridge didn't report any major issues for her county's nine precincts. They had trouble with one voting machine which was quickly replaced.
Baldridge said this will be the last year their county will use these voting machines. They received a grant through the West Virginia Secretary of State's Office and have purchased 20 new ExpressVote voting machines that will be put in service during the next election.
People were able to move through the polls quickly without trouble.
"I believe things went pretty smoothly," Baldridge said. "I didn't hear any issues from the poll workers or anything like that."
Turnout at the polls was greater than expected.
"We already had a huge turnout here during early voting," Baldridge said. "(Turnout on Election Day) was more than what we were anticipating."
Wirt County will have around 30 challenge ballots that will be reviewed by the Wirt County Commission on Monday. No absentee ballots came in on Wednesday. As of Tuesday, they had 12 absentee ballots that had not been returned.
Officials will review to see if any were returned at the polls and if any are received with a Nov. 3 postmark which will be reviewed during canvassing.
Roane County Clerk Charlie White said they were busy at 18 precincts throughout election day. White didn't report any equipment issues.
"We were blessed there," he said. "All of our 90 poll workers showed up at 5:30 a.m. No one got sick and we didn't have to replace anyone. It was a great day."
White was expecting an overall turnout of 60 percent and they had a turnout of 64 percent of the registered voters in the county.
"The lines were not unbearable (Tuesday)," he said. "It was a nice day. It wasn't rainy or cold or snowing.
"The lines (with six to seven people) looked longer because of social distancing."
What lines they had didn't last long as people were able to move through quickly. Poll workers were able to sign out correctly and the county had their count completed by 9:08 p.m.
"It was a normal busy day," White said.
They have a higher number of provisional/challenged ballots this year as many people who haven't voted in awhile decided they wanted to vote in this election.
Their commission will have to review 53 challenged ballots. They received one absentee ballot in the mail on Wednesday.
"There were a few (absentee ballots) we sent out of state," White said of the possibility of getting some more back with the proper postmark to be able to be considered by the county commission during canvassing.
They mailed 1,225 absentee ballots. Tuesday night they counted 1,192
"We don't have too many still out," White said of the remaining 33 absentee ballots.
Jackson County Clerk Cheryl Bright said they saw record turnout during early voting as well as on Election Day at their 31 precincts.
"I was very pleased, almost shocked, at the turnout," she said. "People were very passionate about this election.
"It was great to see so many people getting out to vote."
They experienced the normal challenges they do every election day in getting the equipment in place and set up with personnel traveling about to make sure the poll workers had what they needed to get everything up and running. They had voters who showed up at the wrong precinct and they had to get them to the right precinct and other concerns they see during any election.
Many of those challenges were dealt with first thing in the morning before the polls opened up at 6:30 a.m.
She received no complaints about long lines anywhere. Some locations had potential wait times of 20-30 minutes, she estimated based on how busy they were.
Bright is still in the process of going over the county's challenged ballots and she did not have a number yet that her commission will be reviewing.
With concerns from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Bright worked with her local health department to handle voters who might be self-isolating within the last few days who did not get a chance to apply for an absentee ballot or had a chance to early vote.
They set up a system to allow curbside voting for those people.
"Two girls from our health department volunteered to come and do that for us," Bright said of the two who got dressed in the needed protective gear.
Bright's office got the ballots ready and the volunteers, who were sworn in as poll workers, took them out to the voter's car where the voter could fill out their ballot. The volunteers knew the people had been quarantined and would not otherwise been able to get out and vote.
"Rather than have those people go into the precincts and putting anyone else at risk they were able to vote in their car and everyone was able to remain safe," Bright said. "It went very smoothly."
Her office did around 40 ballots that way.
Bright did have to replace some poll workers as late as Monday night who couldn't come in Tuesday because they weren't feeling well. They were concerned and didn't want to put anyone at risk.
"I am very thankful for all the poll workers who came out and served the county the way they did and conducted this election in a very professional manner," Bright said. "I think we did a bang-up job."
Overall, West Virginia had an historic voter turnout for the 2020 general election, said Michael L. Queen, deputy chief of staff and director of communications for the West Virginia Secretary of State's office.
"Unofficially, it appears as if we have 787,049 registered voters to participate by casting a ballot," Queen said. "That amounts to about 62 percent of all registered voters."
However, Queen said that figure is "very misleading."
''Over the last four years, we have identified a little more than 200,000 'Inactive' voters who haven't participated in an election for more than six years," he said. "If you take those inactive voters off of the state's voter registration list, our voter turnout of 'active' voters for the 2020 general election would be about 73 percent, one of the highest voter turnouts in the nation."
Contact Brett Dunlap at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com