Election board taking first step toward combining precincts
Washington County Elections Board, which is typically comprised of the county commissioners, will take a look next week at a plan to reduce by eight the number of voting precincts before it formally petitions Washington County Court.
The proposal crafted by the Washington County elections office seeks to consolidate precincts in Bentleyville, East Finley Township, East Washington, North Bethlehem Township and North Charleroi and in two precincts apiece in the multiprecinct Chartiers Township, Charleroi Borough and Washington’s 7th Ward before the 2015 primary election.
The motive behind the change is to reduce the cost of deploying duplicate election boards, reducing the number of people needed to fill them, the number of voting machines in service and the cost to the taxpayer.
In Bentleyville, East Washington, North Bethlehem and North Charleroi, voters already report to the same building, as do the voters in Washington’s 7-2 and 7-4 precincts and Chartiers Township’s precincts 2 and 4.
East Finley voters head for either Roadside Chapel or the township building, and the proposal seeks to have all citizens vote at the township building. In Charleroi, voters in Precinct 1 would no longer go to the senior center, but to the Char House apartments, which is the polling place for Precinct 4.
“Where they poll is determined by where we can find real estate to actually put a poll,” said Wes Parry, assistant director of elections in Washington County. “It doesn’t make any sense to keep duplicating efforts. It’s harder to fill holes in these boards.”
North Bethlehem, for example, has fewer than 1,100 registered voters in the entire township, so when turnout hovers around 20 percent, there are only about 220 people showing up to cast ballots. North Strabane Township, a fast-growing area, for example, has 2,500 voters in some precincts, so in the future, the number of precincts in North Strabane may have to increase.
After the elections board takes action Oct. 16, it will petition the court. Affected polling places will be posted with a court date, as will other gathering spots in the municipalities so that anyone who objects to the changes has an opportunity to voice concerns. If the court approves the plan, which could occur around the first of the year, voters will be issued registration cards with new designations.
“There is no sense in trying to do this in the middle of the year,” Parry said, or in the middle of an election cycle.
There are currently 184 voting precincts in Washington County, down from 205 in the 20th Century.