MORGANTOWN — There are a couple ways to look at the city’s early voting turnout heading into today’s municipal election.
On one hand, 717 voters participated during the 10-day period, topping early voting totals from the previous two city elections.
In fact, based on numbers compiled by The Dominion Post, this year’s total is the second highest early voting turnout since pre-Election Day voting was made a part of city elections, in 2005.
The city’s high-water mark for early voting came in 2017, when 1,188 votes were cast in the days ahead of an election that saw contested races in all seven wards. Total turnout in that election was just over 15%.
This election cycle’s early voting bump also came despite the city scaling back to a single early voting location, on Garrett Street in the Historic Train Depot, a site likely more associated with access by rail-trail than vehicle for many.
On the other hand, while the overall number of early votes is up, it’s only slightly so, and the numbers can be a little misleading.
In 2021, a city election that saw overall voter turnout hit a 14-year low of 7.88%, a total of 567 city voters took advantage of early voting — in eight days.
Early voting was not held on Fridays in 2021.
That means, on average, 70.85 ballots were cast per day for the eight-day period.
This time around, an average of 71.7 ballots were cast daily during the 10-day period.
If you look to 2019, the last time the city held a 10-day early voting period ahead of its municipal election, the numbers mirror this year almost identically. There were 710 ballots cast for an average of 71 per day.
Total turnout in the 2019 election was 1,642 or 8.94% of the city’s 18,365 registered voters.
Interestingly, the city did not hold early voting in 2011 as it opted for an entirely vote-by-mail election. That election saw total participation of 22.25%, which is one of two instances in which more than 20% of the city’s registered voters participated in the last 30 years.
The other came before municipal early voting, in 2003, when 3,629 voters or 24.61% of those registered cast ballots on Election Day.
Early voting 2005-2023
Early votes cast compared to total votes cast (in parenthesis).
2005 — 100 (1,403)
2007 — 24 (225)
2009 — 148 (1,467)
2011 — 0 (3,699)
2013 — 490 (2,094)
2015 — 430 (1,540)
2017 — 1,188 (2,724)
2019 — 710 (1,642)
2021 — 567 (1,517)
2023 — 717
