ITHACA, N.Y. — An elderly woman accidentally drove her small car through the window of the poll site at the Linderman Creek apartment complex around noon Tuesday. There were no injuries reported and none of the election equipment was affected. Officials moved the polling site to a different community room located elsewhere on the property.
Voting resumed at 1:57 p.m., just 87 minutes after the incident was reported. Voters who still need to cast their ballot can do so at 101 Conifer Circle, downhill from the original polling center.
County officials said they “can confirm no malicious intent related to the accident.”
Ithaca Fire Department (IFD) Chief James Wheal said that while no one was harmed, the structural damage to the building made it unsafe for voting.
“That dispatch made us nervous,” Wheal said. “It sounds troubling on a day like this.”
Wheal said IFD received the initial call at 12:30 p.m.
“Fortunately, it’s early in the day, so there’s time for people to figure out their plans,” Wheal said.
If anyone was prevented by from voting by the incident, they can go request an affidavit ballot, said Tompkins County spokesperson, Dominick Recckio.
The driver, Debbie Strite, said she accidentally crashed her car while trying to park. She said she intends to vote for Kamala Harris.
Strite said protecting women’s rights and their securing access to abortion were the biggest issues driving her to the polls. She accidentally stepped on the gas instead of the brakes and ended up driving through polls instead, she said.
Dave Smith, a poll worker, was walking through the polling site when he heard a big crash.
“I saw glass coming down on the car inside the building,” Smith said. “Everything as I watched was being spread across the room.”
The debris did not hit the voting machines, he said.
After a brief examination, first responders deemed Strite in good health. She was taken home by a Sheriff’s Deputy.
“I think the other guy is not good,” Strite said before leaving the poll site. “Anything [Harris] does, I think will be better than him.”
Correction 5:15 p.m.: A previous version of this story misspelled the word “brakes.”
The post Elderly driver crashes car into poll site, briefly disrupts voting appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.
The Current’s reporters are visiting precincts in Coastal Georgia throughout Election Day to talk to voters. Here’s what we’re hearing.
The Current is an inclusive nonprofit, non-partisan news organization providing in-depth watchdog journalism for Savannah and Coastal Georgia’s communities.
When the presidential results start rolling in on November 5, the usual battlegrounds will get all the attention. But the real story of the night will be hidden in rural communities across America. These aren’t just dots on the map—they’re bellwethers for how rural America will shape the outcome of the election for presidential, Senatorial, House, and state legislative elections.
We don’t know who’s going to win on Election Night, but we are pretty sure about one thing: Pundits are going to get rural voters wrong.
Expect to see red splashed across vast areas on TV maps, with “expert” commentary about this or that “rural” county—many of which don’t meet the definition. And when the post-mortems arrive, lackluster margins in supposedly rural states will have Democrats second-guessing their investment in rural America, all while missing key districts where rural voters delivered pivotal wins.
We’re here to help. We’ll break down the districts that actually matter and look at the counties and districts that could swing the election, helping you focus on the factors that could genuinely swing the election and shape the future of rural communities, nationwide.
There’s two types of rural counties – classified throughout as non-metropolitan according to the 2023 RUCC (Rural Urban Continuum Code) designation — that matter for the Harris-Trump contest: those that reversed course in the 2020 over 2016 (the flippers) and those that continued the decades long trend in Republican dominance in rural areas.
The Flippers:
The Long-Termers
Elections have proven remarkably volatile the last eight years, but the transformation of rural partisanship has been decades in the making. Will 2024 be an inflection point or a continuation of Democrat losses? We’d look to these counties for answers.
With Joe Manchin’s seat virtually conceded to the Republicans, the battle for the Senate will come down to a handful of races in states where rural votes will be decisive.
Many of the races both parties are targeting for control of the House of Representatives feature significant shares of rural voters. In fact, rural voters could well determine which party controls the U.S. House. Key races will also show if any new ways of attracting rural votes have succeeded for the Democrats or if Republicans will maintain a hold on rural America.
Of course, these aren’t the only races worth watching. Across the country, crucial battles are unfolding on state ballots, from gubernatorial contests, state referenda, to down-ballot races for state legislatures and local offices. There too, rural voters will be pivotal, if given the chance. Over 38% of all state legislative races are uncontested, many of those in rural America where Democrats haven’t even found a candidate to place on the ballot. But take note of Wisconsin where in a surprise turn of events, Democrats have placed a candidate for every single state Senate contest and all but two of the 99 ballots for state assembly. Whether these rural contests will flip the script or reinforce existing divides it’s a reminder that every race should be fought, because real competition strengthens democracy, holds politicians accountable, and ensures rural voters have the representation they deserve.
So this Election Night, let’s keep the focus on the places that matter: the districts where rural votes will truly decide the outcome and who might give us glimpses into a different political future for rural communities. Instead of fixating on where Democrats fall short, we should be looking at the places where rural voters are exercising their clear-minded independence and where candidates are working to restore two-party competition. These are the contests that will tell us more about the future of American politics than the losses.
Nicholas F. Jacobs is an assistant professor of government at Colby College and the co-author, with Daniel M. Shea, of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America. Robin A. Johnson is a governmental relations, public policy, and political consultant and host of the radio program and podcast “Heartland Politics.”
The post A Guide to the Rural Vote: The Places and Races to Watch on Tuesday appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
As of Sunday Nov. 3, more than 395,00 Montana voters had submitted their ballots for the 2024 general election, according to the secretary of state. Others spent portions of their Monday casting their votes early at county election offices using a one-time absentee option. Even more will flock to the polls Tuesday to stand at a booth and fill in the bubbles next to their candidates of choice.
How exactly do all those paper ballots transform into the official results flashed on television and computer screens come election night? The answer to that question is what keeps local election workers busy well ahead of Election Day, and well past it. It’s also something that has generated intense interest and, at times, skepticism among voters across the state.
At MTFP, where we’ve been covering election procedures for years, we spoke with local election officials in Missoula, Gallatin and Lewis and Clark counties to help readers better understand how votes are being counted this week.
In the case of absentee ballots submitted via mail and in person, the count is already underway in many parts of the state. Montana election law allows counties with more than 8,000 registered voters or more than 5,000 absentee voters to process absentee ballots three business days ahead of an election and to begin counting those ballots the Monday before Election Day. That work starts with county staff and volunteers sorting ballots based on the mix of district- and precinct-specific races listed on them, then marking ballots as “received” in the state’s election system.
From there, the signature on each absentee ballot envelope is verified against past examples of a voter’s signature in the state system. Any discrepancies are reviewed by multiple election workers, and, if a signature is missing or rejected, the county attempts to contact the voter directly to resolve the issue. Once a signature is accepted, the secrecy envelope containing the ballot is removed from the signature envelope. The ballot itself is later removed from the deidentified secrecy envelope, flattened out and kept secure alongside the other ballots in its batch until they’re sent to an electronic tabulating machine for vote counting. Each of those steps is recorded on a sheet that accompanies each bundle of ballots through the entire process.
A similar process will be applied tomorrow across Montana to ballots cast at the polls, where voters will deposit their completed ballots in collection boxes. The number of ballots collected in those boxes will be recorded throughout the day, and, once the polls close at 8 p.m., election workers will verify the totals. In many counties, the collection boxes will then be transported from polling locations to a centralized tabulating center under the watch of two election judges. The boxes are accompanied by corresponding pollbooks, which contain the recorded signatures of every voter who cast a ballot at that particular polling place on Election Day.
After polls close at 8 p.m., election workers will begin to put the ballots through the same electronic tabulating machines used to process absentee ballots. The machines themselves — manufactured by Nevada-based ES&S, Montana’s sole certified provider of election equipment — are required by law to be publicly tested for accuracy in the weeks before the election. Batches of voted ballots will be sent through the machines, with the number of processed ballots once more checked and verified. If a machine can’t process a ballot for some reason, perhaps because the voter filled in too many bubbles for a single race or used an ink color the tabulator can’t read, the ballot is flagged and sent to a bipartisan panel of election judges to make sure the voter’s intent is accurately reflected in the night’s final tallies.
Election workers will pull vote totals from each machine throughout the night using a special ES&S-supplied thumb drive and upload them to a secure computer isolated from the internet. Countywide results will be pulled in turn from that computer and uploaded through a separate computer to the secretary of state’s election system.
Voters will see those results reflected in updates to Montana’s online election dashboard. At the same time, poll-watchers and journalists at election offices across the state will be handed printed copies of local results, data that can sometimes let news outlets like the Associated Press report results faster than they appear on the official state dashboard.
The Associated Press also produces race call predictions based on current returns and historical results. In some cases, those race calls are issued before a majority of ballots involving a race are counted based on the agency’s ability to predict the likely political breakdown of a district’s voters.
Despite a wave of skepticism among some conservatives in recent years, Montana’s ballot counting process has been routinely described as fair, accurate and secure by state and local officials of all political stripes. State law has numerous long-established safeguards as well, allowing political parties to recruit poll watchers to monitor local Election Day procedures and requiring randomized post-election audits and county canvasses to double check and certify the results.
Organizations such as the nonprofit Carter Center have also launched independent observation initiatives this year to report on the security and efficacy of Montana’s practices. And, as added insurance, once the secretary of state has proclaimed the results of the 2024 general election official, Montana law requires county election officials to seal and lock away every single ballot for a minimum of 22 months so they’re available to reference in any recounts, challenges or appeals.
Montana’s voting procedures have been the subject of curiosity and even criticism in recent years. So what does happen to a ballot once it’s filled out, and how do the bubbles inked in by voters turn into election night results? We explain.
The very best dressing needs to combine the right bread, evocative aromatics, plenty of fall-leaning herbs, some fat for flavor, a bit of texture, and a pop of sweetness. That is how I developed this “Intermediate Chef Dressing,” which has become standard fare for every holiday menu I craft.
The program provides the community with access to food, knowledge and kitchen supplies raffled off at the end of each class, said Valene TalksDifferent, an All Nations health promotion specialist.
The post How Montana ballots become election results appeared first on Montana Free Press.
A look at how the party, race, gender and ethnic demographics of early voting in NC in 2024 compared to previous years.
More NC voters cast early ballots in 2024 is a story from Carolina Public Press, an award-winning independent newsroom. Our breakthrough journalism shines a light on the critical overlooked and under-reported issues facing North Carolina’s 10.4 million residents. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
San Benito County’s population expanded by 5.6 percent over the four years ending in December 2023, while California as a whole lost 1.4 percent of its residents. That’s because the relatively inexpensive county’s proximity to Bay Area jobs has brought commuters to its two incorporated cities, Hollister and San Juan Bautista.
Any weekday after 6 p.m., convoys of home-bound vehicles squeeze onto two-lane Hwy 25 heading east from the Hwy 101 offramp. The county population has increased by more than 5,000 since 2020, but new residents are not all spending that much money in the county itself.
“People are commuting so much they don’t want to go anywhere when they’re not commuting,” said Kristie Kern, owner of an arts-and-crafts coffee shop in downtown Hollister. She said she hopes to bring in more customers on weekends.
This growth and its lack of knock-on revenue are driving a contentious ballot measure that will go before voters countywide on Nov. 5.
Measure A, called the Empower Voters to Make Land Use Decisions Initiative, proposes to reverse pro-development land-use changes made along Hwy 101 over the past decade to their pre-2020 status, and would require a separate vote by the public for every conversion of agricultural, range or rural land use for commercial or housing development outside Hollister and San Juan Bautista.
The initiative would also remove the commercial status of four “nodes”—essentially highway intersections along Hwy 101: at San Juan Road, Betabel Road, Hwy 129 and Livestock 101.
About 99 percent of the 1,391-square-mile county is unincorporated.
Preserving open space by halting commercial development
Measure A’s proponents believe public votes on each potential project will help preserve San Benito’s rustic character—a tourist selling point—while protecting wildlife in the open grassland and mountains. Opponents say it would halt development on heavily trafficked Hwy 101, and throttle any effort to develop much-needed commercial activity in the county.
The measure would effectively decide what happens to future projects such as San Benito County’s most obvious Hwy 101 enterprise, Betabel RV Park. The 25-year-old RV park already pays transient occupancy tax charged on 172 sites for RVs and trailers, plus a tax on some of the sales made in its general store, manager Rachel Labas said. The park gets ample traffic.
“It is kind of a deserted section of Hwy 101, but it doesn’t seem to deter people,” she said.
Next door to the RV park, property owners Rider and Victoria McDowell have tried over the past five years to build a produce market and restaurant, income from which would eventually help fund the Cancer-A-Gogo charity, created in honor of their teenage son who died from brain cancer.
The project faced environmental lawsuits in 2022 after the couple had spent $200,000 clearing land for the project. Today it remains dormant. Rider McDowell did not answer requests for comment.
The McDowell project would be stopped from going ahead if Measure A passed, unless the owners reapplied and went to county voters for approval.
Opponents say the prospect of going before voters would deter developers of even small-scale projects such as truck stops—the likes of which would create local jobs, contribute tax revenue to the county and allow for upgrades of parks, a jail, rural roads and the library.
“The average person is not that aware of financial or growth issues—the impact of an issue like this,” said Bob Tiffany, a spokesman for the opposition.
Other rural California counties have taken different routes to limiting commercial growth, particularly in the use of agriculture or open-space preserves that act as unbending guidelines for planners.
Napa County, for example, approved an agricultural reserve in 1968, leaving 37,100 acres or 7.3 percent of the county in conservation agreements between landowners and a county trust.
Napa has witnessed acrimonious debates among some of its 500-plus wineries against other stakeholders over the past decades regarding growth and took all that time to find the right formula, said Sheli Smith, executive director of the Napa County Historical Society.
The reserve, however, has channeled growth into the city of Napa. Meanwhile, the region pulled together as a winery tourism hub through the joint work of county, city, Chamber of Commerce and visitor association officials, Smith said.
Napa’s wine sector brings in tax money from hotel stays and some of that goes back into tourism—including the county’s museums and heritage sites.
“You could put all your eggs in marketing what you got and maybe that will bring tourism to your doorstep,” she said.
Previously, San Benito County voters faced three other ballot measures asking about commercial growth—a possible source of confusion among the electorate now.
Ballot Measure K in March 2020 proposed approving commercial nodes on the seven-mile stretch of Hwy 101 that runs through the county, but nearly 60 percent of voters opposed it.
In November 2020, about the same percentage of voters rejected Measure N, which would have allowed a project called Strada Verde Innovation Park to conduct research, test vehicles, operate hotels and house other businesses on 2,777 acres.
Measure Q Redux?
And two years later, 56 percent of county voters turned down Measure Q, which—similar to Measure A—would have required voter approval for land-use changes leading to development.
An advocacy group once called Preserve Our Rural Communities, now known as Protect San Benito County, opposed Measures K and N and led the campaign in support of Measure Q.
County officials have tried to develop spots that past ballot measures were meant to protect, meaning the public should be put in charge now, Measure A proponent Andy Hsia-Coron said.
“When you go out and talk to people, they say ‘didn’t we vote on these already?’” he said.
He believes tourism to wineries and scenic spots should bring in the needed tax dollars but resents heavy traffic. Hwy 101, he believes, gets traffic that’s “backed up for miles” on weekends.
Hsia-Coron contends that tourism including ecotourism could add to the county tax base. “This is one of the most spectacular counties in California,” he said.
But tourism development moves at a crawl in San Benito County, Tiffany said, noting that Hollister has seen two new hotels open over as many years. Tourists would need more places to stay outside the city near scenic spots such as Pinnacles National Park. “That would be a very positive thing to have a hotel or a small resort,” he said.
Pro-Measure A fliers issued this year by Protect San Benito County complain of traffic jams, unsafe roads and a loss of farmland to housing—most of which is within the city limits. The group says it’s a 501c(3) nonprofit, which does not allow political activity. Hsia-Coron has declined to address the group’s legal status.
BenitoLink has checked three fliers this election year and found that they contained errors, lacked context or reiterated flawed arguments. A group called the Hollister Guardians distributed two of the fliers.
Out-of-county support
Several Bay Area environmental groups back Measure A on environmental grounds, though none are based in San Benito County.
Jessica Wohlander, an environmental associate with Palo Alto-based group Green Foothills, said keeping Hwy 101 free of more development will let bobcats and mountain lions cross the freeway through tunnels or overpasses between mountain ranges on either side, increasing biodiversity. Green Foothills, along with the Alameda County-based Save Mount Diablo, have helped fund Measure A.
The group has also helped gather signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot.
Today oak-studded mountains rim San Benito County, stretching southeast through ranches and open space to the Fresno County line. Flatlands closer to the two incorporated cities support farms that grow tomatoes and flowers for nursery use.
Former county supervisor Anthony Botehlo, an opponent of Measure A, says income from stores, restaurants, hotels and other new businesses would contribute to the tens of millions of dollars needed for public services.
San Benito ranks among four California counties where just 9% of property tax revenue went to the county government in 2022, according to the State Board of Equalization. The board logged about $142 million in property taxes for San Benito in 2022.
“It’s very uneven throughout the 58 counties,” Tiffany said. “It puts San Benito County at a real disadvantage to start with, and then on top of that, we have very few other revenue sources, like sales tax, that come in from the unincorporated areas of the county.”
Among the county’s top priorities, Botelho said a new park would cost $1 million per acre, adding that it would cost $40 million to bring the library up to current standards; road repair normally costs $1 million per mile and 450 miles of road are due for upgrades. He also noted that San Benito County Jail needs $7 million more to avoid losing a $15 million grant.
“The measure kills revenue opportunities,” Botelho said. “And that’s it, in a nutshell.”
The post Measure A could stall commerical growth in rural San Benito County in perpetuity appeared first on BenitoLink.
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Good morning, Wisconsin. It’s Election Day — and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Voters here in Wisconsin will help pick the next president, choose a U.S. senator, send eight people to the U.S. House, elect state representatives and senators, decide whether to amend the state constitution and weigh in on scores of local ballot referendums.
Polls open at 7 a.m. in Wisconsin and close at 8 p.m. If you are still in line at 8 p.m. and haven’t yet had a chance to vote, stay in line. You will still be able to cast a ballot.
Even though the polls close at 8 p.m. here, expect it to be at least a few hours — and possibly longer — to get definitive unofficial results. Wisconsin is one of seven battleground states that will determine the outcome of the election. Here’s when polls close in the other six, but just like here, don’t expect to know who won each of these states right away.
All times listed in Central Standard Time:
If someone declares victory shortly after polls close — especially in the presidential election — be extremely skeptical. In 2020 former President Donald Trump declared victory while millions of votes still needed to be counted. And, as has been well documented, President Joe Biden won that election. Trump could once again prematurely — and potentially baselessly — claim victory again this year, with some members of his orbit urging the former president to address voters even earlier on election night than in 2020.
It’s important to remember that the results reported on election night are unofficial. At Wisconsin Watch, we look to the Associated Press and other reputable news organizations for our race calls.
The vote counting process will take time and varies by municipality in Wisconsin. Local election officials pick where absentee ballots are counted.
In most places, including Madison, absentee ballots that have been cast will be distributed to the polling location across the city where a voter would have cast a ballot in person to be tabulated throughout the day. In others, like Milwaukee and Green Bay, absentee votes are tallied in a central location.
Counting votes takes time. When counting absentee ballots, poll workers have to announce who cast a ballot, check the voter’s name off a poll list, open the ballot envelope, unpack the ballot and feed it into a tabulator, per the Journal Sentinel.
However, there are fewer absentee ballots this year than in 2020, which could help speed up election night returns. Election officials in Milwaukee are predicting that tabulation will be faster this year than in 2020, but still cautioned it will be a late night.
Finally, control of the Assembly is up for grabs, something that could upend the status quo of Wisconsin politics. Read more about the races that could determine which party wins a majority here.
— Jack Kelly
Need a ride to the polls? Here are a few options.
— Julius Shieh
In 2020, a lot was made of a so-called “red mirage” or “blue shift.”
On election night, millions of Americans went to bed with former President Donald Trump leading among returns, only for them to wake up to Joe Biden having surpassed him in some states after large, mostly Democratic cities like Milwaukee processed absentee ballots into the early morning hours of Wednesday.
Trump used his election night lead to baselessly claim that he won the election. Eventually, on social media, he demanded that election workers “STOP THE COUNT!” as his paths to victory evaporated.
The delay in reporting election results was attributed to the massive increase in absentee ballots cast in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic — which broke heavily for Democrats. That wasn’t surprising given in the months leading up to Election Day, Trump questioned the validity of absentee voting. Some 1.9 million people voted via an absentee ballot in Wisconsin in 2020, far surpassing previous records, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
As of Nov. 4, a little over 1.5 million absentee ballots have been cast in Wisconsin. At the same time in 2020, more than 1.8 million absentee ballots had been returned.
Historically, with the exception of 2020, about 20% of Wisconsin general election voters in presidential election years voted via absentee ballots. This usually ranges from 600,000 to 800,000 votes. In 2024, the state broke a million votes on Oct. 30.
When counting absentee ballots, poll workers have to announce who cast a ballot, check the voter’s name off a poll list, open the ballot envelope, unpack the ballot and feed it into a tabulator. That process takes time, especially in communities like Milwaukee where absentee ballots are counted in a single location.
Five communities across the state swapped to central absentee ballot counts in 2024. In full, 39 cities, towns or villages use the centralized system. The cities of Milwaukee and Kenosha were the first to adopt this method, in 2007 and 2008 respectively. As of Nov. 4, there are a little over 400,000 absentee votes cast in municipalities that use the centralized system.
Despite fewer absentee ballots being cast, election officials are still warning that it will be a late night.
“I don’t think it’ll be that bad,” Paulina Gutiérrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, told WisPolitics.com about when to expect results from the city after polls close. “But it won’t be like a smaller election, and so it will be a late night.”
– Jack Kelly and Khushboo Rathore
The totals haven’t matched the levels of 2020, when the pandemic kept many voters home, but they’re running above expectations.
Arlene Meyer says she’s voted in every election since she was 21 — the legal voting age until 1971. Last month she cast her 17th vote for president from her nursing home.
“It was excellent,” Meyer said Friday. “Everybody had a chance to vote for whoever they wanted to.”
Local election officials brought voting machines into Pine Crest Nursing Home in Merrill, Wisconsin, weeks before election day. If a municipal clerk receives at least five absentee ballot requests from nursing home residents, special voting deputies can be sent into that facility to collect residents’ votes, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
The return of special deputies to nursing homes ahead of Election Day marks one clear difference from 2020, an election shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Backers of former President Donald Trump thrust nursing home voters into efforts to delegitimize President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s partisan investigation of the election identified a couple of cases of people in nursing homes who had voted despite a court adjudicating them “incompetent” and removing their voting rights.
Special voting deputies didn’t visit nursing homes in 2020, because WEC’s bipartisan members waived rules requiring them, seeking to limit COVID-19’s spread to vulnerable seniors. That meant nursing home staff were tasked with helping residents fill out ballots.
Trump’s allies seized on that context to baselessly claim thousands of adjudicated incompetent voters may have had votes cast in their name. A Wisconsin Watch investigation later found those claims to be dramatically inflated, though it also found the state lacks a statutorily defined system for ensuring those ruled mentally incompetent don’t vote. An attempt to create such a system failed to pass the state Senate earlier this year.
The issue even came up in the U.S. Senate race between Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican challenger Eric Hovde, who in April while discussing potential voting irregularities said, “if you’re in a nursing home, you only have five, six months’ life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote.”
Meyer, a former Lincoln County Board Supervisor, said she remained fully competent to mark her ballot in this election.
“I’m 86 and mentally stable,” she said with a chuckle.
A bag of library books, most about history, sat next to her recliner. Her typical day at the nursing home starts with watching the news.
“I like to see what’s happening in the world,” Meyer said.
Asked why voting still felt important, Meyer responded: “Everything a politician does, it’s going to affect everybody, including me, even though I’m not out working or anything else. But yes, I think it’s very, very important, and I want to know what’s going on. … I got children here, I got grandchildren here. I got great grandchildren here, it’s going to make a difference.”
– Addie Costello
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
It’s Election Day! Follow our live coverage of what’s happening around Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
When West Virginians go to the polls today to cast ballots for their next U.S. Senator, Governor, state delegate, or county sheriff, their votes will be counted and protected, despite any fraud claims.
Four years ago, then-President Donald Trump falsely alleged that the election had been stolen from him. The turmoil that followed led to a violent insurrection in which his supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory.
This year, Trump has said that if he loses the election, it will only be because he was cheated out of victory. Therefore, things could get increasingly confusing, so here’s what you need to know if you’re watching events unfold at home.
If you haven’t voted today, there’s still time.
Today, several key races will be on the ballot. The state will have new leadership come January between the governor’s race and local delegate races in each district.
Mountain State Spotlight has a comprehensive voter guide with information about each candidate running in your district and our previous coverage talking with voters from all 55 counties.
After polling locations close and results come in, we’ll have live election results on our website provided by the Associated Press.
We recommend reading coverage at news outlets like the Associated Press for information about national races outside of West Virginia. There, those results will be updated in real-time after polls close on Election Day.
The Associated Press has a team of experts who research historic voting trends and election laws. As votes are tallied, they project winners when the losing candidate can no longer come back and win.
Voter turnout has historically been much lower in West Virginia than in other states for the past three presidential elections. But, in early voting, several county clerks said they had record-breaking turnout on the first day.
On the night of Election Day, ballots cast and tallied are reported as unofficial votes. After polls close, official results will not be known until a few days or weeks later.
Five days after the election, excluding weekends and holidays, county election officials conduct the canvass process in which mail-in, early voting, absentee and election-day ballots are counted together. During this process, officials also review voting machines and other materials involving vote collection.
After the canvass process is completed officials declare the results and wait 48 hours, during which candidates can request a recount. Then, the results are certified except in places where votes must be recounted.
Within ten days after the results are certified, candidates can contest the election through the courts.
If the results are not contested, then those are sent to the secretary of state and governor within 30 days to be reviewed. The deadline for results to be transmitted is December 5.
To learn more about how election officials canvass votes in West Virginia, you can find the state canvassing and recount manual on the Secretary of State’s Office website. Or view the West Virginia Election Calendar.
To learn more about election laws, you can read the elections and officers portion of the state constitution.
The West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office ensures that each election is secure and every ballot is properly counted.
County clerks conduct the actual counting of votes at the local level, as laid out in state law.
“The process is established in a manner to make elections the safest and most transparent for gaining the public’s confidence,” wrote Diana Cromley, Mason County clerk and president of the West Virginia Association of Counties, in a recent op-ed.
County clerks are responsible for making sure that everyone who votes is eligible to vote and has access to vote, Cromley wrote. They also assist with the canvassing process after Election Day.
In 2020, former President Donald Trump claimed that the presidential election had been stolen, despite numerous court rulings indicating otherwise. These claims have been echoed by West Virginia politicians, even the state’s top election officer, Secretary of State Mac Warner.
The truth is that incidents of voter fraud are almost nonexistent, voter impersonation is very rare and many instances of alleged fraud are errors by election administrators, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice.
Human errors can still happen. In Mingo County, a state Senate candidate was mistakenly left off of nearly 700 ballots during early voting.
Several studies have also been conducted which have shown election fraud is incredibly rare. It is illegal in every state for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, holding a penalty of up to a year of federal prison and a fine.
“Citizens can vote in 2024 with confidence,” wrote Michael Waldman, the center’s president and CEO. “Despite the noise and lies and melodrama, voting will likely be uneventful for the vast majority of Americans.”
Today is Election Day. Here’s how votes are tallied and secured in West Virginia. appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.
Follow live election results from the Associated Press to see how Nevadans are voting for federal offices.
