MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – In Monongalia County, the process of building new precincts is underway. On WAJR’s Talk of the Town, county clerk Carye Blaney said the mapping process for the legislative and precinct districts was completed in January.
Now, she said the challenge is getting each of 60,000 active and inactive voters into the correct district.
“The challenging part is the redistricting of each individual voter inside of the statewide voter system,” Blaney said. “In our county we’re almost 70-percent complete with that.”
According to Blaney, the new statewide voter registration system is not fully compatible with mapping systems, so the process is much slower.
“Our particular county has decided to manually redistrict all of our voters,” Blaney said. “So, we can know for sure they are accurately placed inside the voting district they should be in.”
The statewide system is being upgraded by new vendor Civix. This is the first state voter system project Civix has taken on.
“We’re not falling prey or at the mercy of a statewide system that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t work,” Blaney said. “I think many of the other counties across the state are really struggling.”
The change from 67 multi-member delegate districts to 100 single member districts has been a complicated process. Blaney said some “splintered” precincts result when inaccurate census boundaries are incorporated into the new districts.
“The challenge under the law is you cannot have more than one House of Delegates district and one state Senate district inside a precinct,” Blaney said. “So, you cannot have multiple delegate districts inside a precinct- that’s where the challenge is.”
Blaney said all voters who are being assigned to a new precinct will receive a letter explaining the change.
Early, absentee and election day voting will be available for the May 10 primary.
“One thing I do want to stress is early voting and casting your ballot at early voting really does eliminate a lot of the headaches.”