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(Election 2024 – Photo Illustration/MetroCreative)
PARKERSBURG — People will be heading to the polls today to cast their ballots in the 2024 West Virginia Primary Election.
Polls will open up at 6:30 a.m. and will close at 7:30 p.m. at the voting locations for the county’s 69 voting precincts.
“We are looking forward to (today),” Wood County Clerk Joe Gonzales said. “The voters will get out and pick their candidates.”
This is the election of the candidates who will represent the various political parties in the races for President, House of Representatives and Senate as well as a number of state and local races to determine who will be the candidates in the General Election in November.
Equipment has been delivered and will be set up by the poll workers this morning.
Gonzales said they have already had a few poll workers say they can’t make it so alternates are ready to fill in where needed. They also have people ready to go this morning, if needed.
“We have people ready to call and get them out to the precinct,” Gonzales said.
As of Monday, they had 307 poll workers.
Early voting has been going on for a couple of weeks at the Judge Black Annex and over the last week at community sites at the Williamstown City Building, the Vienna Community Building, the Mineral Wells Volunteer Fire Department and the Lubeck Volunteer Fire Department.
“I thought it went very smoothly,” Gonzales said of early voting. “We did not have any issues at any of the community sites or the Judge Black Annex.”
There were 5,033 people who participated in early voting, he said compared to the 5,006 voters who did it in 2022.
“There were roughly the same amount of early voters,” Gonzales said. “It was pretty even across the board.”
Of those, 3,620 were Republican, 1,325 were Democrat, 88 were non-partisan and zero for the Mountain Party.
This past Saturday, which was the last day of early voting, there were 697 people voting across all the sites, including 503 Republicans, 179 Democrats, 15 non-partisan and zero Mountain Party voters, Gonzales said.
If people in Wood County have a question about where they need to go to vote, they can call the Wood County Clerk’s Office at 304-424-1860.
Brett Dunlap can be reached at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com
