Lower Macungie has been given until early May to come up with a new plan that will determine who will vote where in the township’s 10 voting districts.
Two township officials successfully persuaded Lehigh County election board representatives to delay seeking court approval for a plan that would have expanded the number of voting districts in the township from 10 to 13.
They reached that agreement in the old county courthouse on Feb. 20, just before those election board representatives were scheduled to ask a judge to approve their plan.
“The Board of Elections agreed to a continuance until May 8 and have invited us to submit a compromise proposal for a more fair distribution of voters in Lower Macungie Township,” said township commissioner Brian Higgins.
“If we can come to an agreement prior to that date then they will withdraw their request of the court. If we can not get an agreement, they will ask the judge to allow their original plan.”
On Thursday night, Higgins told his fellow township commissioners that Lower Macungie has been invited to present its own redistricting plan for township voting districts at an April meeting of the election board.
The county intended to break up the township’s election District 2 into four smaller districts, because too many people are assigned to vote in District 2.
Those people cast their ballots at the polling station in Bethany Church at 1208 Brookside Road.
A voting district should have no more than 1,200 voters, according to state law, but more than 4,000 registered voters are assigned to vote in District 2.
“We do not have one district in this township that’s under 1,200 voters,” said Higgins. “So to just do one would be silly if none of them meet what they’re looking for.
“To go from 10 to 13 very arbitrarily seemed not to make sense.”
“We also pointed out that, to get to that 1,200, we’d need 20 — double the number of polling places that we have,” said Atty. Richard Somach, the township solicitor, who had joined Higgins in asking the election board to delay its plan.
Somach was skeptical that the township could even find 10 more places willing to host polling stations.
In addition to District 2 having too many voters, the election board wanted to break it up to reduce the potential for long lines of people waiting to vote.
But Higgins said the last time Lower Macungie had any problem with long lines was in 2004, the presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry.
“At that time, we only had five voting districts,” he said. “It went to 10 from that.”
“We’re working to come up with a better idea for redistricting and looking at all 10 districts, not just District 2,” said Higgins.
He said the election board is “willing to work with us.”
Next week he will be meeting with Timothy Benyo, chief clerk to the election board, to get information about how many township residents voted in the last five elections as well as maps of all 10 voting districts in Lower Macungie.
Higgins’ goal is “to see if we can come up with a plan to evenly disburse. If we can get all 10 districts to about 2,200 voters, we would be equal across the board.
“We wouldn’t have to get more polling places and the county wouldn’t have to hire more staff” to work at those additional polling places.
When Higgins and Somach showed up at the courthouse in Allentown on Feb. 20, they were told by Benyo and Atty. John Ashcraft, the election board’s solicitor, that never before had anyone showed up to object to a redistricting plan and request that it be postponed.
“They were not real happy about it,” said Higgins. “They wanted to know why it took us so long.” He noted the township had only learned about the election board’s plan on Feb. 6.
“We are appreciative that the Board of Elections is willing to entertain our ideas and we hope we can come to an equitable agreement for all our voters,” said Higgins.
Township commissioners who sent Somach and Higgins to the courthouse that morning had no argument with the election board wanting to reduce the size of District 2, only with the way it proposed doing it.
They also objected to redistricting township polling places before the May 19 primary election, saying that would give voters little time to be made aware of the changes.
Now, said Higgins: “Any re-districting will most likely not take place until after 2016 election cycle.”
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