Absentee voting by mail begins Friday in West Virginia
Mar. 29—By GREG JORDAN
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
PRINCETON — Voting for the May 14 Primary Election officially starts today in West Virginia as qualified voters who have applied for an absentee-by-mail ballot will start seeing those arrive at the addresses they provided on their applications.
For active duty military on deployment, voters living overseas, and those who are stateside living with a physical disability that prevents them from in-person voting and absentee voting without assistance, Friday is also the first day county clerks will begin providing them the means to participate via electronic means prescribed by law. To date, nearly 1,200 voters have applied for an absentee ballot, according to the West Virginia Secretary of State's Office.
"West Virginia law permits absentee-by-mail voting for voters who are not able to vote in person during early voting or on Election Day," said Secretary of State Mac Warner. "The excuse-based alternative to in-person voting is available to registered voters for causes such as illness, disability, hospitalization, military deployment, and work-related or personal travel."
"In West Virginia, we have more options for participating than any state in the country," Warner said. "We want voters to vote."
Registered voters can call their county clerk's offices to apply for absentee ballots.
"WV Code dictates that we start mailing out absentee ballots tomorrow," Mercer County Clerk Verlin Moye said Thursday. "We haven't received our ballots yet but I'm sure we will. Tight schedules are common during elections."
"As of today, we have received and vetted 65 applications for absentee ballots and are eager to get those out," he said Thursday.
Vetting involves application completion, signature comparison, address and party verification and documenting any phone contact changes. Moye urged voters to fill out their applications completely.
"If we have a question about the voter's application, as a courtesy, we will call them," Moye said.
The last day to request an absentee ballot by mail is May 8.
Other significant dates for West Virginia voters are: — April 23-Voter Registration Deadline. — May 1 to May 11- Early Voting occurs. — May 14 is Primary Election Day.
"We will be posting the ballots and other helpful information on our website: www.mercervotes.com because every election is extremely important," Moye said. "We encourage and challenge all 37,128 of our registered voters to get out and vote."
To learn more about absentee ballot voting in West Virginia, registered voters can visit GoVoteWV.com, a secure website hosted by the West Virginia Secretary of State's Office, according to Warner.
— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com
Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com
