During the original elections in May one district of Chester City had only nine voters. About a five-minute walk from the hotel, his neighboring district did a little better-15 voters were here.
Voters in two districts of Delaware barely surpassed the number of five survey employees at each place of employed to introduce them to the voting process. And the connected circuits were averaged by less than two voters per hour that day.
In future elections, the election officials want to connect these voters into the same district and do the same for dozens of others.
“We had districts in the last elections, in which the voting cards were light as a feather,” said Jim Allen, Director of the Delaware County election.
Court auditions will start next week in 18 cases of the Delaware County Election Council submitted to consolidate 98 districts throughout the Fountains. If each consolidation is approved, 48 fewer voice districts will have the unit. Officials say that it has long been a needed reform, which will drastically reduce the costs of administering elections in Delaware, but the unit may encounter resistance to right activists.
Why is the Delaware District consolidating?
The Delaware unit has 428 voice districts. It boils down to about one district for each 953 voters. In nearby Montgomery, which has a larger population, there are 426 districts, which means one district for about 1445 voters.
Allen said that Delaware’s Districts are unevenly divided, which means that some districts process several times more voters than districts in a different place in the county. He said that extremely petite districts are traces of times when electoral officials could place electoral places in residential garages.
Some of the existing polling stations are only a few blocks from each other, and in some cases there are different lines in the same building.
When consolidating districts, Allen predicted, Delaware’s Faille will save $ 100,000 a year and over half a million dollars, when it was time to replace the election equipment.
“Not consolidating with so many districts would be abuse,” said Allen.
The consolidation of districts will mean less equipment and less survey employees needed, which facilitates the work of electoral officials and political parties.
Colleen Guiney, chairwoman of the Delaware Democratic Party, said that she hopes that consolidation would make the recruitment process of survey employees from year to both sides.
“In general, it will be simpler, because the lines should be shorter, the staff should be better,” said Guiney.
Is consolidation controversial?
Like most of the problems related to the elections in 2020, consolidation caused controversy.
When in January Allen first presented this proposal to the Delaware Council, he faced the recoil of right -wing activists who were afraid that consolidation was a movement to ultimately eliminate the districts.
“What is wrong with a store with a equipment or a garage in which Democrats and Republicans work together to juxtapose voting?” Joy Schwartz said, a former candidate for the Republican Council, who made unfounded claims regarding electoral fraud.
“People, people, you want to move away from it, you want to centralize it all, you want to get it out of the hands of people and put your choice and his employees in the hands of your director.”
Allen called Pushback absurd, noting that he was from the same people who raised unfounded claims for electoral fraud since 2020.
During consolidation, Allen said that he had received support from party leaders who have long fought for recruitment of a sufficient number of survey employees to serve numerous districts of Delaware.
“We worked really hard to make sure that voting is smoother in districts and this is part of this plan,” he said.
How will the changes be approved?
Allen hopes that some consolidations can be approved during the time when voters go to polls for November local elections this year. The rest, he said, should be completed in next year’s intracerexiated elections.
Last month, the unit of Delaware filed the universal Court. The auditions in these cases start next week and last throughout the month. Inhabitants of the areas where consolidations take place will have the opportunity to testify about consolidation before the judge issued a decision.
Then, said Allen, the proposed changes will go to the Pennsylvania Department for approval.
