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ELKINS – Election Day has officially arrived and many voters in Randolph County took advantage of the 10-day early voting period that concluded on Saturday. After only seeing 1,593 residents come out for early voting during the May Primary Election, that number almost doubled for this year’s General Election. A total of 3,250 voters visited the county’s two locations, the Commission Annex in Elkins and the Russell Memorial Library in Mill Creek, during the early period.
“I’ve never seen us have this many people come out and vote early with the ballot as small as it is,” Randolph County Courthouse employee Ryan Stanley, who has worked in the Clerk’s office for the past 16 years, told The Inter-Mountain Monday. “It was a really big turnout this time around.”
A large number of voters hit the polls during the home stretch of the early voting period as the final three days saw close to 1,000 residents make their way to polling places. As of Wednesday afternoon (Oct. 28), 2,117 voters had already voted in Randolph County.
At the conclusion of the early voting period on Saturday, Randolph County Clerk Karla Mahnes and her staff have been busing preparing for today’s election, which will run from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
“We’ve had people picking up the machines and taking them to the polling places and Karla (Mahanes) has been out helping deliver those today,” Stanley said. “We are just preparing so that everything runs smoothly on Election Day.”
And it appears that the higher early voting numbers aren’t just limited to Randolph County. West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner announced on Thursday that voter turnout for the early voting period was approximately 30 percent higher than it was during the same time period as the 2022 midterm election.
According to Warner’s website, 115,855 of West Virginia’s 1,210,297 registered voters had cast their ballots during the early voting period up to Thursday. That included 109,902 in-person early votes, 9,584 absentee ballots requested, and 5,953 absentee ballots returned. In 2022, 84,504 votes were cast during the first week of early voting
For more information or questions about the election, call the Randolph County Clerk's Office at 304-636-0543. Additional information about the general election can be found at govotewv.com.