CHARLESTON, W.Va. — One longtime Kanawha County poll worker says there’s nothing like being a part of the effort in ensuring people are performing their civic duty of getting out to vote.
Kanawha County resident Carol Gallion said she’s been working the polls on Election Day for many years now and it’s a service she loves to do. Gallion told MetroNews why she loves serving as a poll worker so much.
“I think it’s because people want to vote and use their voting privileges’, families, some who are older and even younger ones, they’re happy to vote and they love the little stickers,” she said.
Gallion was among the other poll workers picking up the supplies they’ll need for Tuesday’s big Primary Elections at the Voter’s Registration Office in Charleston the day ahead.
She said she will be at voting precinct 142 at Sharon Dawes Elementary School in Cabin Creek. It’s one of the 184 precincts and 154 voting locations around Kanawha County.
As one of the many locations that have had to combine multiple precincts together around the county, Gallion said she expects her precinct will have quite a good turnout coming out to vote tomorrow.
“We have a lot of voters, even a lot of them after work they come, some of them come early, the very first ones before work, then after work and all day long, we stay busy,” Gallion said.
Workers at Voter’s Registration were not only handing out the supply packages for poll workers Monday in preparation for the big day, but they were also loading the necessary equipment onto trucks to send out to the various precincts to get set up.
Kanawha County Clerk Vera McCormick said the day seemed to be going as smoothly as it could, despite the fact that they had a few poll workers quit. She said she is hopeful no one decides to quite on Election Day at least as it’s more difficult to find a replacement on such sort notice.
“We hope everyone shows up tomorrow, because we have to open up at 6:30 and they’re supposed to be there at 5:30, that gives us a little bit of time in case somebody doesn’t show up we can send someone out,” McCormick said.
McCormick said, however, people getting cold feet and backing out of being a poll worker is nothing new as it happens all of the time.
She said there a couple of people who quit due to family emergencies among other various reasons, but they try to be prepared the best they can when this does happen.
“We have a couple of people who had to go to the hospital, so there’s things that happen, and we try to have alternates all along so we can, you know, fill in the slots, but it’s hard keeping enough poll workers, it takes close to a thousand for us to open up on Election Day,” she said.
McCormick said it has been somewhat of a long process getting this point, but she thinks it will all go well.
“Early voting picked up the last few days, and you know, for early voting, it was very slow at first, but I think tomorrow will probably go pretty smooth,” said McCormick.
Early voting wrapped up on May 11. Polls on Election Day Tuesday open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m.