By Rick Steelhammer
For HDMedia
At exactly 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday, David Adkins, a precinct commissioner for primary election voting at Ruthlawn Elementary in South Charleston, stepped outside the school building and yelled to no one, “Polls are open!”
Adkins said a vocal announcement that polls are open at 6:30 a.m., and closed at 7:30 p.m., is required on every election day, at each precinct.
“You’ve got to yell it,” he said.
While Tim Keffer of South Charleston might not have been present at the polling place soon enough to hear Adkins’ call, he was the first voter to arrive at Ruthlawn to cast his ballot, so he could hasten his secondary Primary Election Day goal of casting a line into the waters the Cranberry River in quest of trout.
By 6:45 a.m., Keffer had fulfilled his electoral obligation and was set to embark on a 100-mile drive to Richwood, in Nicholas County, to meet up with friends already on the stream.
“They went last night,” said Keffer, who added that he never misses an election. “But I had to stay to vote.”
It’s no time to be a bystander’
While slightly less than 1 in 4 registered West Virginia voters cast ballots during the past four midterm primaries, several others who turned out to vote in Kanawha County on Tuesday shared Keffer’s perspective on the importance of voting.
“With all the crap going on now and democracy at stake, it’s no time to be a bystander — you really need to participate,” Brigid Haney of Charleston said as she prepared to cast her ballot at Piedmont Elementary School.
“I’m 82, and I’ve voted in every election since I was old enough to be allowed to vote,” said Michael O’Farrell of Charleston, who also voted at Piedmont.
“Voting’s importance can’t be overstated,” O’Farrell said. “The decisions made today will affect our lives in coming years. If you’re too tired or too disinterested to vote, you’re letting someone else decide your future.”
O’Farrell, a Democrat, said this year’s primary is of particular interest to him, in that Republican candidates have expended an unusual amount of money and effort in attacking factional rivals within their party.
“This year, the Republicans are eating their young — they’re engaged in cannibalism,” he said. “It’s a race to the bottom to see who’s the most ultraconservative. I say, let them fight it out.”
“I feel it’s my duty as a citizen to vote,” Michael Layne of Charleston said after exiting his Piedmont Elementary polling place. “It’s sad that so few seem to feel the same way.”
“I’m voting because I want to see change in how the city deals with the homeless community, affordable housing and the rising cost of living in general,” said Danielle Smoot, another Piedmont voter. “I walked here this morning because I didn’t want to pay for the cost of gas it would take to drive here.”
In Dunbar on Tuesday afternoon, one voter lectured those who might complain after the fact.
“If people don’t vote, they don’t have the right to say anything about any of the rest of it,” said Victoria Pruett, a Dunbar resident of nine years who voted at the Dunbar Mountain Mission Church, at 605 Dunbar Ave.
By the numbers
“I truly think that more people are voting than expected,” Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick said midway through Tuesday’s balloting. “The voting’s been steady and we’ve already had to send extra ballots out to a couple of precincts. That’s a good sign.”
A crisp, cool morning that gave way to a sunny spring afternoon, with highs in the mid-70s, might have also helped bring fair-weather voters to the polls, McCormick said.
A total of 67,356 West Virginians participated the state’s early voting period that began on April 29 and ended Saturday, according to Secretary of State Kris Warner. That accounts for an 8% increase over the number of voters casting early ballots in the state’s last mid-term primary, held in 2022, Warner said.
A surge in voter interest during the last two days of early voting helped produce this year’s 8% increase, he said.
The higher turnout indicates that the state’s new “Photo ID to Vote” policy did not have an adverse effect on early voting participation, Warner said, adding that he expects the trend to continue during the general election.
Editor Christopher Millette and Visual Journalist Laura Bilson contributed to this report.
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