George Christian, who has lived in the Eagleville Apartments for the past 15 years, found out earlier in the week that he would be voting at Ridgeway because of the realignment of precinct boundaries.
Christian lives about a mile from his previous voting place, the Eagleville Community Center, but now he will have to drive 18 miles round trip to cast a ballot at the Ridgeway Baptist Church.
âIt doesnât make sense to me,â he said Monday in a telephone call to the Republican-Clipper office.
County officials have also been receiving calls from other persons concerned about the changes in the voting boundaries.
The county reduced the number of polling places in the county from nine to six after purchasing new electronic voting machines. The previous precincts at Washington Center, Blythedale and Mt. Moriah were consolidated into the neighboring precincts.
County Clerk Jackie Deskins said the change was made to reduce election costs since each voting place will be using expensive electronic ballot readers. These costs will be shared by townships, school districts, fire districts, ambulance districts and other entities.
Debbie Reed, county election officer, said county officials drove hundreds of miles in attempting to redraw the precinct boundaries in a way that would be most convenient for voters. In many cases they tried to make sure that voters would have good roads to the polling places. Many changes had to be made because of the closing of the Washington Center, Blythedale and Mt. Moriah polls.
Eagleville proved to be a difficult issue for election officials. This northern Harrison County community is split into three different townshipsâColfax, Union and Marion.
âWe tried to make each precinct to be as equal in the number of registered voters as possible,â Deskins said.
This means that persons living in Marion Township in the eastern part of Eagleville will be voting at Ridgeway, which hasnât gone over very well with some George Christian and some of his neighbors.