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Fewer polling sites in Youngstown
SEE ALSO: Trumbull precincts consolidate
YOUNGSTOWN
With 32 fewer voting precincts in Youngstown starting with the May primary, there also will be fewer places to cast ballots in the city.
The Mahoning County Board of Elections approved a plan Friday to have 13 voting locations in Youngstown, down from 18.
Two polling locations in the 1st Ward have only one precinct in each, but the 11 others have multiple precincts.
“We don’t need all of the polling locations we have because there are some that had very few voters,” said Joyce Kale-Pesta, board director.
The board agreed last month to reduce precincts in Youngstown from 77 to 45, effective with the May 5 primary. The reduction was done because Mahoning County has the lowest average number of voters per precinct — 623 — among the state’s 13 most-populous counties.
Even with the reduction of 35 precincts, Mahoning is still No. 1 among those counties with about 715 voters per precinct. The state average is 827 voters per precinct.
The original plan had a single precinct — Martin Luther King Elementary School on Mariner Avenue — in the 2nd Ward, which takes in most of the city’s East Side. The 2nd Ward is the largest ward in the city in terms of size because it is sparsely populated.
Board member Tracey Winbush, a Republican who lives in the 2nd Ward, objected.
“Land mass in the 2nd Ward is really, really large,” she said. “When we consolidated precincts, we gave people our word that it wouldn’t be so inconvenient” for them to vote. The ward “is so widespread that it’s too difficult to have one polling location.”
The board agreed to reinstate the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County’s East Side branch on Early Road as a polling location for the 2nd Ward. Before the consolidation, the East Side had three polling locations with the other being the McGuffey Centre on Jacobs Road.
The 7th Ward on the city’s South Side has one polling location: St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church’s Activity Center on Shady Run Road. It’s had one polling location for about 18 months, Kale-Pesta said.
The 1st Ward — which includes downtown and parts of the East, North and West sides — has five polling locations. That’s down from seven, but is still the most of any ward.
Of those five locations, St. Columba Cathedral’s Social Hall on West Rayen Avenue, downtown, and Rockford Community Center’s Center for Community Empowerment on Dogwood Lane, on the northeast side of town, are each for a single precinct.
The 3rd and 4th Wards each have two polling locations, and the 5th and 6th Wards each have three polling locations. The 3rd and 5th wards each lost one polling location.
Struthers, the other city in the county with a primary election, had its voting precincts reduced last month from 15 to 12. It’s had four polling locations for years and will keep that amount.
After the primary, the board will look at the rest of the county to reduce precincts with a focus on Boardman, Austintown, Campbell and Poland, Kale-Pesta said.
The board also certified the candidates and issues for the May 5 primary.
The only person disqualified was Jackie Spann-Menton for Youngstown’s 6th Ward Democratic primary. She turned in nominating petitions with 31 signatures with only 19 of them determined to be valid by the board. Youngstown council candidates need 25 valid signatures to qualify for the primary.