MORGANTOWN — Just going by the percentages, you’d have to go back 20 years, to 2004, to find a higher turnout in Monongalia County than the recently completed 2024 election.
But percentages can be deceiving.
After the completion of canvassing on Tuesday, the county ended up with a turnout of 64.24%.
That might lead you to believe turnout must have been up significantly compared to the 57.04% that voted in the 2020 presidential election … except it really wasn’t.
The 2020 election saw 42,503 ballots cast. This time around, the number was 41,965.
The difference comes down to registered voters.
In 2020, there were 74,516 registered voters on the books in Monongalia County.
In 2024, that number had been trimmed down to 65,330 resulting in a higher percentage of participants casting some 500 fewer votes.
“It wasn’t the largest actual turnout that we have had. I don’t like to use turnout percentages because that fluctuates with the number of registered voters we have. I like to look at the number of ballots that were cast and people who actually participated in the election. It was just slightly lower than 2020,” Monongalia County Clerk Carye Blaney said. “Still, we saw a tremendous increase in early voting – about 5,000 more people than we typically have. So, overall, it really was a great success.”
All told, nearly 58% of all votes cast, or 24,227, were cast during the 10-day early voting period. Election Day saw 16,315 voters get to the polls. Another 1,320 voters participated via absentee ballots and 103 (of 444) provisional ballots were added during canvassing.
A provisional ballot is cast but not counted until a determination is made on its validity by the Monongalia County Commission sitting as the county’s board of canvassers.
The voter not being registered in Monongalia County is the most common reason a provisional ballot is disallowed.
The canvassing process always includes a hand-counted audit of two randomly chosen precincts. This time around it was Precinct 30 (Marilla Center) and Precinct 51 (Clay-Battelle HS).
Blaney credits the staff in the clerk’s office and some 220 poll workers for making it another successful election.
She noted there were polling locations that handled more than 1,700 voters in a day without long lines, much less any sort of incident or disruption.
On Election Day, Monongalia County’s unofficial results were posted about an hour after the polls closed.
“I can’t say enough about our staff in the clerk’s office and our poll workers. Many of our poll workers we used in this election worked for us in the primary, so they were familiar with the process. They’ve done a great job,” Blaney said.
The county’s turnout percentages for the last six presidential elections are: 2024 (64.24%); 2020 (57.04%); 2016 (37,216 of 67,438 – 55.19%); 2012 (31,932 of 57,827 – 55.22%); 2008 (33,984 of 54,262 – 62.63%); 2004 (34,540 of 52,754 – 65.47%).
