Jan 21, 2016 4 min read

Thirteen months after a judge approved precinct consolidation, the elections office is asking the Washington County commissioners to pay for a data service to realign voting precincts in six municipalities and consolidate yet another.

The changes could increase the number of voting precincts to about 180 from 176, but what it will take to prepare and justify the alterations is a bit more complicated than that.

The realignment would affect Amwell, Cecil, Donegal, Mt. Pleasant and North and South Strabane townships, while Canton Township voters would see one precinct eliminated.

At the commissioners’ agenda meeting Wednesday, Commissioner Harlan Shober questioned the approximately $12,000 cost proposed by BonData geodemographic consulting firm based in Hummelstown, Dauphin County, a sentiment that commission Chairman Larry Maggi echoed afterward.

“I just need an explanation,” Shober said.

BonData, which bills itself as nonpartisan, on its website says it “can determine your voter registration by census block and can then draw new voting districts from the census block up.”

On Thursday, the board unanimousy approved the purchase of service from BonData.

Two districts would be added to Cecil Township’s current six, and North Strabane Township’s six precincts would be redrawn as eight. South Strabane’s five precincts would become six. In those three townships, former farmland has given way to housing development.

Donegal Township’s three districts will be reconfigured as two.

In Amwell, the two districts will be realigned, as will Mt. Pleasant Township’s four districts, one of which has 1,500 voters while the other three have between 141 and 370.

Canton Township’s five precincts would be reduced to four by combining Precincts 3 and 1, which have fewer than 500 registered voters each. Covenant Life Church at 55 Point View Drive is the polling place for Precinct 1, and the municipal building at 655 Grove Ave. is where voters go for Precinct 3.

“Four or five years ago, I tried to have these two combined,” said John Sheppard, chairman of the board of Canton Township supervisors. “The paperwork is still there. We’re still in favor of it. It’s hard to find people to work the elections.”

Sheppard said he’d also like to even out the number of registered voters in two other Canton precincts.

Washington County Assistant Elections Director Wes Parry said the work related to reducing 16 precincts to eight in 2014 took him about a month to accomplish. He had to compile information for a court petition, prepare to testify and post dozens of notices about proposed changes within each municipality. The Department of State in Harrisburg and voters in the various districts also had to be notified.

Redrawing the lines related to the changes that would be put into effect before the Nov. 4 presidential election, he said, is more complicated.

The law calls for precincts to contain no more than 1,200 voters, but it also demands that tiny boroughs like West Middletown and Coal Center, which each have a population of 139 according to the 2010 U.S. Census, maintain their own polling places.

Precincts have the 1,200 threshold to keep voters from waiting in long lines or possibly forsaking their civic duty because they can’t spend an inordinate amount of time in line.

Presidential election years have the highest turnout, and Parry hopes to relieve “some of our more congested polling places.”

BonData would take into account census and voter registration data, roads and availability of polling places. Parry said the elections office does not have computer software to integrate various data platforms to come up with a plan.

“It’s going to be a sizeable amount of work,” Parry said.

As new housing has sprung up in Cecil and North Strabane Township, the communities have not necessarily added community centers that could serve as polling places, Parry said.

“These big housing plans, they’re just houses,” Parry said.

The 2014 round of consolidations affected Bentleyville, East Washington, Washington’s 7th Ward, North Bethlehem, Charleroi, North Charleroi, Chartiers and East Finley.