Judge OKs precinct consolidation
Carrying a batch of laminated signs, Washington County Assistant Elections Director Wes Parry had to place 10 around East Finley Township earlier this month to notify voters a change in their voting precincts was pending.
In consolidating East Finley’s two precincts, Roadside Chapel would no longer be a polling place, and all voters in the township would have to head to the township building. After posting those two sites, Parry, in an area he described as “very, very rural,” was out of options.
“I thought I was going to have to lasso a sheep and put it on the side of one,” he testified Wednesday in Washington County Court.
Trying to find enough people to handle local election board duties is nearly impossible in East Finley, Parry said, and he had to recruit a judge of elections from Washington. The township has 747 total voters.
On Wednesday, at the request of the Washington County Elections Board and election office, President Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca approved a plan to reduce the number of voting precincts by eight, so the next hurdle the proposal has to clear is with the Department of State in Harrisburg.
O’Dell Seneca noted a precinct is to include no more than 1,200 voters, but the consolidation of Bentleyville’s two precincts would include 1,492 and questioned Parry, who testified as a witness for Mary Lyn Drewitz, Washington County solicitor. Turnout there, he said, was only about 40 percent when the 2012 presidential election year is included, and just about 33 percent if one removes the presidential-year spike.
Precincts have the 1,200 threshold to keep voters from waiting in long lines and, possibly forsaking their civic duty because they can’t spend an inordinate amount of time in line.
In addition to Bentleyville, the judge’s decision, if approved by the state, affects voters in East Washington, Washington’s 7th Ward, where precincts 2 and 4 will become 4; North Bethlehem Township; Charleroi 1 and 4, North Charleroi and Chartiers 2 and 4; and East Finley Township. The elections office resorted to recruiting high school students to man the polls because of a lack of personnel within several precincts.
Parry said after a news story on the proposed consolidation appeared in the Observer-Reporter, he received between five and 10 phone calls in support of the plan. Jack Bauer, North Bethlehem Township judge of elections, attended the hearing in support of the proposal.
Mark Connors, East Washington constable, receives more money by being in charge of keeping the peace at two polls instead of one at First Christian Church, 615 E. Beau St., but he said after the half-hour-long proceeding he couldn’t argue with the reasoning behind precinct consolidation, which will reduce the county’s 184 precincts to 176 and save taxpayer dollars.
After the hearing, Elections Director Larry Spahr said voters will be notified through a mailing after the state considers the matter, and he asked those in the affected precincts not disregard the notification, which will also be advertised before it takes effect in the May primary.
Wednesday’s action was not the last voters heard of precinct changes. Because of population growth in North Strabane Township, there are precincts that also top the 1,200-voter threshold and will have to be split, probably before the 2016 presidential primary or general election. Presidential years have the heaviest turnout.