County gets OK on final district lines
Published 5:00 am Thursday, May 8, 2003
With final pre-clearance of all political district linesfollowing Lincoln County’s redistricting last year, electionofficials can now begin preparing for this year’s contests.
Board of supervisors attorney Bob Allen informed board membersand county election officials this week that justice court andconstable district lines had been pre-cleared by the U.S.Department of Justice. New supervisor district lines, whichincluded a more involved process, were pre-cleared earlier.
Voters affected by district line changes will have to beadministratively re-registered, said Circuit Clerk Terry LynnWatkins. Watkins said she was waiting on a map and a list ofaffected households from the redistricting consultant beforebeginning the re-registration.
“That’s the next step,” Watkins said.
Allen said less than 800 voters were affected by redistricting,which was needed to bring the county back into compliance withconstitutional one-man, one-vote and voting rights act minorityvoting strength guidelines. The attorney said the new maps shouldarrive in the near future.
“They’ll be here by the end of this week or early next week,”Allen said.
Watkins said affected voters will be notified by mail of theirnew voting location. She said voters who have been moved from onesupervisor district to another and from one precinct to anotherwill be sent a letter detailing the changes.
“We want to get that completed as soon as possible,” Watkinssaid.
Once the administrative re-registration is done, Watkins saidballots for this year’s political party primaries could be printed.She said the voter information is needed in order to give a betteridea of how much ballots to print.
“We’re waiting on that information before we can get our ballotsprinted,” Watkins said.
In addition to state offices, 20 county and area districtoffices will be decided this year. Seventy-three candidates havesigned up to run in the local and area contests.
A special election will also be held in November to fill theunexpired term of Lincoln County School Board member Jerry Coon,who died in April. The qualifying period for school boardcandidates will be Aug. 6 through Sept. 5.
The first party primaries are scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 5.Party primary runoffs, where necessary, will be held Tuesday, Aug.26.
Party primary winners will go on to face each other in thegeneral election on Tuesday, Nov. 4.