Wood County canvass confirms primary election results

PARKERSBURG -- The votes have been counted and there were no changes that impacted the outcome of any race in Wood County.

The Wood County Commission gathered Monday as the canvassing board to review and certify the results from the May primary. No races were changed as a result of canvassing.

"It was a busy morning, but it has been going smoothly," Wood County Clerk Joe Gonzales said. "We have had great help from all the employees and the commissioners.

"I think it has gone very well."

Former Wood County Clerk Mark Rhodes has been working with the clerk's office this election because of his experience working past elections. He was present Monday during the canvassing process helping with various aspects.

A group of 12 poll workers gathered at the Wood County Courthouse to conduct a hand count of three randomly picked voting precincts with the poll workers counting the paper ballots printed from the voting machines after each voter was done. The hand count has to be within 1 percent of the computerized total.

The precincts picked in a drawing were 42A, 40 and 36B which officials stated were some of the larger voting precincts in the area. Gonzales said the early votes were pulled from those precincts and included in that count.

The commission reviewed a total of 90 provisional ballots that had questions raised about whether they should be added to the county's final count.

Of those ballots reviewed by the county 42 ended up being added to the final tally of votes that were made election night and during early voting.

Officials also reviewed 11 absentee ballots of which six were counted and added to the final totals.

Of the reviewed provisional ballots, officials determined not to count 37 ballots.

Reasons for not accepting ballots included people trying to vote in a primary for a political party they were not registered in; their voter registration had been inactive for a long time and they tried to vote again when they needed to come in to the County Clerk's office first to update their information; people are not registered to vote in West Virginia; people assisting voters not having the correct signatures on the proper paperwork to do so; signatures not matching with what is on file; voting in the wrong precinct; voting a different ballot style than the one set for their precinct; an absentee ballot that was postmarked after election day and so on.

Reasons where ballots were accepted were poll workers voting where they were working; people having moved who were voting in the correct precinct for where they now live; absentee ballots that came in after election day but were postmarked on or before election day and so on.

Deputy Clerk Alisha Cross said of the ballots not counted, the voters will be contacted by letter to tell them if their provisional ballot had been counted or not, why and any corrective action they can take so the issue doesn't happen again in the future.

"If it is something that could be remedied, we tell them how to remedy it," she said. "If they are not registered, we will make sure we can send them a registration or a party change or anything like that as well as the deadlines for that.

"We know why it happened and they will know why it happened."

Commissioner Jimmy Colombo said the county does a good job of following up with these people.

"We go above and beyond," Cross replied. "Especially with the provisionals because those make people nervous."

There was one ballot that should have been made a provisional ballot that ended up being counted on election night, officials said.

Cross said the ballot in question should have been pulled, but wasn't due to a poll worker error. The ballot itself should have been pulled because the voter chose to vote another ballot style other than what was slated for their precinct.

"It was not caught in time and ended up going into the tabulator," she said.

The ballot will not impact any races, Cross said.

"There is not a single race that is within one ballot of another that it would affect," she said. "It does not affect the ending results."

Officials said they will have additional training in the future with poll workers to make sure this mistake does not happen again.

There were 307 poll workers out on election day as well as a number of staff members from the county clerk's office out at the county's 69 voting precincts.

Gonzales said on election day, his office fielded over 900 calls from people looking for where they needed to vote, voting hours, they moved but didn't change their voter registration and more.

"There were a lot of different things and we directed them on where to go," he said.

Brett Dunlap can be reached at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com