West Virginia polling place sees major voter turnout

By Nate Harrah, Marshall University

Student News Live, the first broadcast of its kind has kicked off just in time for election day but as ballots are cast, some may wonder how the election process actually works.

“We have to get our poll workers and then we have to train them, and we have around fifteen to sixteen classes for our poll workers,” Cabell County Clerk Scott Caserta told Student News Live reporter Holly Belmont. “Then we give them a time or option or day to pick from that. Once we got them trained, then we place them in precincts.”

“Everybody gets there at 5:30 just to get everything together and turned on,” he added. “At the end of the day, we start shutting everything down. The poll workers then gather everyone’s stuff and then take it here to the courthouse. We take the flash drives they bring us; it then gets plugged into our computer systems, and it immediately updates to the state office at the same time.”

When addressing the voter turnout rate being much higher this election than others, he said, “It’s been crazy, the turnout has been fantastic, and the crowds have been amazing. This is an emotional election.”

“We had almost 15,685 votes cast in the early election. To put that into perspective, during the primary election this year our total votes was 17,000.”

According to a report from West Virginia’s Secretary of State Mac Warner, 310,421 people participated in early voting in the state. “This is a very important election for many people and people are just taking it in stride,” Caserta said. “They are waiting patiently no matter how long the lines get. During early voting we had almost an hour long wait at the courthouse.” 

The Cabell County commissioners play a special role during elections. They go over provisional ballots and make sure they are correct and counted in the election. Caserta also serves as the Chief Financial Officer and is responsible for maintaining and processing all of the county’s financial records.