Photo by Joselyn King Belmont County Director of Elections William Shubat shows the letter of commendation he received from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted for his work in state elections. Shubat will retire effective Jan. 25.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — After more than 30 years working in Ohio elections, Belmont County Board of Elections Director William Shubat is retiring.

He is stepping aside at the start of 2019 and allowing current Deputy Director Kelly McCabe to take over as director; he officially ends his tenure effective Jan. 25. Erin Moore, the office’s information technology coordinator, will become deputy director.

Shubat, 61, worked for nine years at the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel plant in Benwood before going to work for the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office in 1987. He took over as Belmont County’s election director in 1994. Shubat said he was able to work in the steel industry up until the Benwood plant’s closure because older workers took early retirement there to allow the younger ones to keep working.

“I said then if I ever had the chance to retire and let others continue to have jobs, I would do it,” Shubat said.

He owns a farm in Monroe County, where he will work in his retirement.

He said he will still help out with elections when needed.

“I’m just looking forward to what life can give me,” Shubat said.

Much has changed politically in Belmont County since 1994, he acknowledged — not the least of which is the fact that the county now has more registered more Republican than Democrat voters and has three Republican commissioners. Shubat remembers discussing the dominance of the Democrat Party in the county with former U.S. Rep. Wayne Hays, D-Ohio, in the early 1980s.

“He told me the county was as Republican 60 years before that as it was Democrat then,” Shubat said. “He told me then, you’ll live to see it come back in about 40 years.

“Here we are, and it has.”

There have been a lot of other changes, too, according to Shubat.

Campaign finance pamphlets for candidates that were once three pages long now exceed 80 pages, he said.

Shubat still believes the punch-card ballot voting system to be the easiest and most cost-effective way of conducting elections. But these machines were succeeded in Belmont County by electronic voting machines after the 2000 election, which were later replaced by optical scan paper ballots.

For many years, Shubat said, the county seldom had more than 6,000 absentee ballots to count in any one election, and these were processed by hand by just one employee. Today there can be as many as 15,000 absentee ballots cast in an election, and computer scanners make them easier to count, he noted.

The changes also are costing the county more money, he said. Thirty years ago, the office’s budget was about $140,000 annually; last year’s county budget for elections was set at $1.4 million.

Poll workers who previously volunteered their time at the polls now receive $268 for a long Election Day’s work.

“And we never had law firms practicing election law,” Shubat said. “Now we have firms that do only that.”

The board of elections also has changed locations, moving from the Chase Bank building in Bellaire to Riesbeck’s Plaza in St. Clairsville in 2006. The office is being relocated again this year, with county officials planning to have the office at the former offices of The Health Plan along U.S. 40 east of St. Clairsville near the Ohio Valley Mall by June.

“I have been the most blessed man, getting the opportunity to do what I love with a board that I love,” Shubat said. “I’ve always told everyone the Belmont County Board of Elections is one of the best boards you’ll find, and our staff is second to none.”