May 16, 2015 2 min read

In December, when a court order reduced the number of Washington County voting precincts to 176, election day seemed far away.

Now, the day to head to the polls is nearly here and some voters – but not many – will find themselves casting ballots in new surroundings.

“The only precincts that were not already polling in the same physical location were the East Finley precincts and the Charleroi precincts,” wrote Wes Parry, Washington County assistant director of elections, in response to an email inquiry.

In East Finley voters should no longer head for either Roadside Chapel, and, in Charleroi, voters who formerly headed for the senior center will be going to the Char House apartments.

Late last year, at the request of the county elections board and the elections office, then-President Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca consolidated 16 precincts with neighboring ones to make eight.

The communities include Bentleyville, Chartiers Township, Charleroi, East Finley Township, East Washington, North Bethlehem Township, North Charleroi and Washington’s 7th Ward.

The motive behind the change was 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.

To help man local election boards, students from Trinity and Ringgold high schools and Intermediate Unit I Clark School campus have undergone training to fill slots where needed. Canon-McMillan High School students may participate in the fall, Parry said.

There will be no polling changes for any of Greene County’s 44 precincts this primary, according to elections Director Tina Kiger. However, she noted that voters in the Dunkard Lower precinct will continue to go to Dana/Coresco Training Center at 322 Meadows Run Road in Mt. Morris after moving the voting machines there beginning in 2014. The elections office is still looking for a permanent polling place for that precinct, she said.