(Election 2024 - Photo Illustration/MetroCreativeConnection)

PARKERSBURG — The canvass of the votes cast in the general election will be held Tuesday at the Wood County Courthouse.

The Wood County Commission will gather Tuesday at 9 a.m. as the canvassing board to review and certify the results from the November General Election.

Usually, the commission will gather to canvass the Monday after the election during its regular meeting day. However, Monday is the Veterans Day holiday and the canvassing was moved to Tuesday.

“We will probably be here all day,” Wood County Commission President Blair Couch said.

The commission will be reviewing provisional/challenged ballots as well as absentee ballots sent back with the proper postmark to be approved and added to the totals.

“It will take a little while,” Wood County Clerk Joe Gonzales said. “We have a lot of provisionals.”

He also said they are still receiving absentee ballots daily, postmarked Nov. 5 and eligible to be counted.

Gonzales said he and his staff have been checking the mail three times a day. They got 23 absentee ballots on Wednesday and nine on Thursday morning.

“They are still coming in,” he said, adding they are coming in from across the country and from around the world.

One Parkersburg City Council race is currently separated by three votes that provisional/absentee ballots might change. In the race for Parkersburg City Council District 5, independent candidate William “Zak” Huffman received 298 votes while incumbent Democrat J.R. Carpenter received 295, according to the unofficial totals.

Gonzales said they will have the total count of provisional and absentee ballots on Tuesday before the canvass begins.

In addition to the review of provisional ballots and absentee ballots, commissioners will randomly pick three voting precincts where a hand count will be done by poll workers to see if they match the tabulated totals.

Few problems were reported Tuesday while voting was going on. Gonzales said things went smoothly. Precincts were not as busy as he was expecting at the end of day between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

“They were not that busy,” he said.

Gonzales attributed that to the number of people who came out for early voting, prior to Election Day.

They had some printers jam and other minor problems that were dealt with quickly.

They had a few instances where people had medical issues that were dealt with and instances where people tried to wear political attire to vote, but were asked to turn it inside out or cover it up in other ways.

The county had 307 poll workers who worked Election Day. Gonzales said he had five who called off and he had his office staff go out and fill those positions. There were also six poll workers who worked to process the absentee ballots and enter them in the system.

“I thought it all went really well,” Gonzales said.

According to the unofficial total from Tuesday night, they had 37,447 ballots cast for this election out of 56,012 registered voters. Voter turnout was at 66.86%. Gonzales said around 32% of registered voters voted early with 18,339 ballots cast.

“I think early voting is where most people got out,” he said, adding the majority of early voters were aged 55 and above.

The Wood County Clerk’s Office fielded around 1,100-1,200 calls in the office on Tuesday.

People wanted to know where their voting precinct was and if they were considered active or inactive voters.

“There were a lot of phone calls,” Gonzales said. “The phones never stopped.

“They were busy all day long.”

Brett Dunlap can be reached at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com