Police jury merges voter precincts

Tuesday night the Lincoln Parish Police Jury reunited nine voter precincts that were broken into pieces during last year’s redistricting, but the move doesn’t change the voter shuffling between districts that took place at the time.

“Everyone will still vote for the same people they would have voted for, and everyone will still vote at the same polling location,” Interim Parish Administrator Courtney Hall told jurors before the unanimous vote. “This is strictly a numerical combination of two precincts.”

In other words, if your district was changed during redistricting, you’re still a voter in that new district. You’ll still vote at the same place you always have. But the name of your precinct may have changed again Tuesday.

Understanding this move requires a look back at last year’s redistricting efforts.

In early 2022, as a result of population changes in the 2020 census, the police jury and school board made changes to the 12-district voter map that the two bodies share in order to even out the number of voters in each district.

Several precincts were sent to new districts, but in some cases, simply moving an entire precinct wouldn’t get the population figures back into alignment.

Hall and jury President Richard Durrett on Tuesday said they couldn’t draw new precinct lines at the time because the state of Louisiana hadn’t finished drawing its new lines.

“We were frozen on the lines we could use,” Durrett said.

So instead, nine precincts had pieces carved out of them and turned into new, “alpha” precincts. For example, Precinct 1-1 had a chunk removed and turned into Precinct 1-1A — essentially a couple blocks of student housing on Grambling State University campus.

Then those “alpha” precincts and their original counterparts were shifted to new districts independently from one another as needed. Precinct 1-1 stayed in District 1, for example, but Precinct 1-1A was sent to District 2.

Fast forward to Tuesday. The police jury has now brought those split precinct designations back together, while still maintaining the district reassignments that were made in each one.

So voters in Precinct 1-1A are back in the regular Precinct 1-1, but they will still vote in District 2 elections moving forward.

As a result, residents in some precincts will be voting in different districts than other folks living in those same precincts. All of them will vote at the same polling location, however.

Confusing? You’re not alone.

But officials say the mergers are necessary to cut down on costs and manpower associated with running elections.

When the split precincts were separated, each one required a different polling commissioner in charge and 2-4 separate workers, Hall said, even though some of the alpha precincts had very few registered voters. Bringing them back together means fewer workers are needed at that polling place.

Voters can check the Geaux Vote app or the Louisiana Secretary of State’s website to find their school board and police jury districts. The new district map was approved for last fall’s school board elections, but it only just went through for the police jury and may not be reflected online just yet.

But the redistricting will be in effect by the time this fall’s police jury elections roll around.

Here’s the list of previously split precincts that are merging back together.

• Merge Precinct 1-1A with Precinct 1-1 into New Precinct 1-1

• Merge Precinct 2-1A with Precinct 2-1 into New Precinct 2-1

• Merge Precinct 3-1A with Precinct 3-1 into New Precinct 3-1

• Merge Precinct 4-5A with Precinct 4-5 into New Precinct 4-5

• Merge Precinct 5-2A with Precinct 5-2 into New Precinct 5-2

• Merge Precinct 6-1A with Precinct 6-1 into New Precinct 6-1

• Merge Precinct 8-3A with Precinct 8-3 into New Precinct 8-3

• Merge Precinct 11-2A with Precinct 11-2 into New precinct 11-2

• Merge Precinct 11-3A with Precinct L1-3 into New precinct 11-3 In addition, some precincts are getting renamed to more closely reflect the new district assignments from last year.

As a result, fewer voters now live in a district that is different than the first number in their precinct name, but that is still the case for some.

Here’s the list of new precinct names.

• Rename Precinct 2-2 into New Precinct 11-5

• Rename Precinct 8-3 into New Precinct 6-4

• Rename Precinct 8-4 into New Precinct 6-5

• Rename Precinct 9-3 into New Precinct 6-6

• Rename Precinct 9-5 into New Precinct 8-3 (Reusing name of 8-3)

• Rename Precinct L1-2 into New Precinct 10-6

• Rename Precinct 12-5 into New Precinct 9-3 (Reusing name of 9-3)