VIENNA — The Maries County Democratic Committee hosted its party’s presidential preference primary last Saturday at the Youth Building at Vienna City Park.

This year’s presidential preference votes are the first since Gov. Mike Parson signed a bill to eliminate state-run primaries. Parties were left to organize their own systems for choosing presidential nominees.

The Republican Party chose to hold an in-person caucus to decide its nominee, which former President Donald Trump won in both Maries County and Missouri earlier this month. In contrast, the Democratic Party chose to have a ballot-based primary. Voters were able to mail their votes to the state party up until 10 a.m. on Saturday while in-person voting occurred from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday.

The candidates for the Democratic nomination include President Joe Biden, entrepreneur Jason Palmer and author Marianne Williamson. Results were not available until Monday. Missouri has 64 delegates available to the candidates.

Biden is the presumptive nominee after securing more than the estimated 1,968 delegates needed for the presidential nomination though the party will not officially choose its nominee until the national convention in Chicago in August. He has won every state and territorial primary so far during this cycle except for American Samoa, which Palmer won. It was the first time since 1980, when Ted Kennedy defeated President Jimmy Carter in 10 state primaries, that a candidate beat an incumbent president in a primary.

Biden won the state and county primaries. He received 23 out of 24 votes in the county with one voter uncommitted. Nearly all the in-person voters had also signed a petition to put the Missouri Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment on the ballot in November. If the amendment were to pass, it would add a right to reproductive freedom to the Missouri Constitution, which the amendment defines as “the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.”