Ward changes cause voting confusion at polls in Starkville
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Voting looked different for Starkville residents on Tuesday, April 1, and for some it caused a lot of confusion.
After the most recent census, the city had to redraw its ward boundaries. That meant some residents were assigned to new wards– changing their polling places without them realizing it.
Some voters ended up going to multiple precincts before realizing where they were supposed to cast their ballots.
Many had to fill out affidavit ballots instead, which are used when a voter’s eligibility is in question.
“With the census we had in 2020, we had to redistrict, and when we redistricted, that means that some of those lines, those ward lines were moved,” said Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill.
Mayor Spruill said the city shared information about the changes across several platforms in the months leading up to the election.
“We have put it on our website. I know, every board meeting, I talked about it. Our vice mayor talked about it. We tried to notify people of where those changes where and where they were supposed to vote, depending on what ward they were in. We used all the resources we’ve had,” said Spruill.
Thomas Sanford is the Geographic Information System (GIS) Director for the Golden Triangle Planning and Developing District, Inc.
Sanford said cities and counties redistrict if there are too many people in some wards or too little in others.
“If there is an imbalance of population greater than 10% deviation between one district to another, redistricting is required, which means you have to move people out of one district to another to get that population back to being equal,” said Sanford.
But it wasn’t just redistricting that caused issues. Some voters appeared in the wrong ward due to errors in the voter roll.
“There were some in the voter roll that looked like ‘I was in one ward, but I’m really in another.’ It’s the voter roll that controls all of that,” said Sanford.
Those discrepancies left residents like Tanika Plummer unsure of where to go.
“I was redirected three times. I was told at first the Sportsplex. From the Sportplex, I was told the fire station on Garrard Road. I got redirected from the fire station on Garrard Road at 6:59 PM,” said Plummer.
Polling precincts close at 7:oo pm.
She said also saw others who faced similar problems.
“When I left the fire station, there was a line of people who were in the wrong place. It was almost 7:00 pm then. It shouldn’t have happened,” said Plummer.
She hopes things are clearer by the time voters head to the polls again.
Mayor Spruill said they even posted signs at former locations directing voters to new ones.
Voter roll changes can not be made until after the general election in June per state law.
The affidavits for the mayoral democratic primaries resulted in the incumbent Lynn Spruill winning the with 1422 votes, Charles Yarbrough in second with 1247, and Brenna Hunter Betts in third, with 118.
Spruill will run against Republican candidate Roger Bassett in the general election.
