Trumbull polling places may be merged

By Ed Runyan

The board has made tentative plans to vote on precinct reductions Feb 2.

WARREN — After several tries, the time might be right this winter to reduce the number of Trumbull County voting precincts.

During a workshop meeting Tuesday, elections board members appeared to be in agreement that as many as 67 precincts could be eliminated before the May 5 primary election.

Niles Mayor Ralph Infante, a Democrat and elections board member, has been researching a proposal from Republican board member Ron Knight that would combine precincts in Warren, Niles, Girard, Hubbard, Brookfield, Champion, Fowler, Hartford, Howland, Hubbard Township, Kinsman, Liberty, Mesopotamia, Southington and Weathersfield.

Infante is partway through the list and has found 15 precincts so far that he feels would be acceptable if combined.

He has looked into consolidations in Niles, Hartford, Bazetta, Mesopotamia and Kinsman so far, he said.

He found some he didn’t like, he said, such as combining Niles precincts B and G, which are on opposite sides of Mosquito Creek and would require some voters to travel to the nearest bridge at U.S. Route 422 or to Federal Street to get to their polling place.

He has yet to examine the largest block of proposed consolidations — 23 of them in the city of Warren, he said, so he doesn’t know whether there are any problems with them. Each consolidation involves combining two precincts into one.

Christ Michelakis, the county Democratic Party chairman, said he also will be looking at maps for places such as Warren to help him decide how many of the precincts can be eliminated. He said it’s likely that some of the precincts with low numbers of voters can be combined.

In Knight’s plan, combining precincts would result in some precincts’ having as many as 761 registered voters, but that is still not higher than Champion Precinct E, the county’s largest precinct, which gets along fine now with 761 registered voters, Knight said.

When Knight first proposed reduction of precincts in 2006, he got an icy reception from the Democrats on the board at the time, Sherron Platt and Barbara Katzenberger. His fellow Republican, Craig Bonar, also voted against some of his proposals.

At the time, Knight proposed eliminating roughly half of the 273 voting precincts and saving $110,000 per year in poll worker salaries and training.

Later in the year, the elections board opposed a more modest proposal to eliminate 30 precincts by combining them.

The proposal was dismissed at the time because of concerns about new voter identification requirements passed down to the elections board from the Ohio Legislature and other changes in voting laws.

The matter was set aside in 2007 and 2008 because of the presidential election, said Kelly Pallante, elections board director.

Board members agreed to consider approving consolidations at the 2 p.m. Feb. 2 meeting. Waiting much later than that would make it difficult to prepare for the May 5 primary, Pallante said.

runyan@vindy.com