The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration has taken the first steps to consolidate the current eight precincts in the county into four.
Dark Corner and Colham Ferry precincts would remain unchanged in the proposed consolidation, but Bogart and Marswood Hall precincts would be merged into one precinct called Oconee Northeast.
City Hall, Bishop, North Oconee, and Civic Center would be merged into one massive precinct called Oconee Central. The precinct would stretch from the Clarke County line in the north to the Greene County line in the south.
At its meeting on Tuesday (Dec. 3), the Board voted to approve the tentative changes and authorized Sharon Gregg, Director of Elections and Registration for the county, to put advertisements in the Dec. 12 edition of The Oconee Enterprise seeking citizen input on the proposed changes.
The Board is scheduled to take up the proposed consolidation at its next scheduled meeting on Jan. 21 of 2025.
The Board on Tuesday decided not to review a list of 75 voters whose eligibility to vote had been challenged prior to the election. Gregg informed the Board that none of the 75 voted or made an attempt to do so.
The Board had been restrained from taking action on the challenges prior to the election by an Oct. 24 ruling by Oconee County Superior Court Chief Judge Lisa Lott in a suit filed against Election Board Chair Jay Hanley and Director of Elections Gregg by Oconee County citizen Suzannah Heimel.
At the meeting on Tuesday, Hanley informed the other Election Board members of a Nov. 26 appeal of Judge Lott’s decision by Heimel. Hanley recommended against discussion of the 75 challenges.
Consolidation
The proposed precinct consolidation would be the second since the November 2020 elections.
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| Proposed Precinct Map |
In that 2020 election, voters in three of the county’s 12 precincts cast their ballots at locations outside their precincts because of difficulty finding voting locations that could accommodate the space needed and because of electrical requirements of the new voting equipment.
The goal at the time, restated by Gregg on Tuesday, also was to avoid use of school facilities for security reasons.
In December of 2021, the Board voted to reduce the number of precincts from 12 to eight, merging the Farmington and Bishop precincts, the Colham Ferry and Antioch precincts, the North High Shoals and North Oconee precincts, and the Civic Center and East Oconee (formerly called Athens Academy) precincts.
The proposal approved by the Board on Tuesday would combine what had been seven precincts prior to 2020 (Farmington, Bishop, North High Shoals, North Oconee, Civic Center, East Oconee/Athens Academy, and City Hall) into a single precinct called Oconee Central.
Election Day voting for Oconee Central will be at the Civic Center. The precinct is technically Precinct 1.
Colham Ferry and Antioch precincts were merged in 2021, and they will remain together in a new precinct, to be called South Oconee, or Precinct 2. Voting is to continue at Poplar Springs Baptist Church on Colham Ferry Road.
Dark Corner will remain unchanged, as was the case in 2021. It will be Precinct 3, with voting at Bethabara Baptist Church on Monroe Highway (U.S. 78).
Bogart and Marswood Hall will be merged to form Oconee Northeast, Precinct 4, with voting at Marswood Hall at St. Philothea Greek Orthodox on Mars Hill Road.
Reasons For Change
Board Chair Hanley said on Tuesday that consolidation is “something we've kind of been discussing informally over the past several months.”
Hanley said the discussion was in part the consequence of voter use of early voting.
In the Nov. 5 election, 21,272 voters (76.9 percent) cast a ballot in advance in person voting, 1,595 (5.8 percent) used an absentee ballot, and only 4,769 (17.2 percent) voted on election day.
Consolidation also will save “taxpayer money,” Hanley said.
Gregg said to make the change “we'll need to publish a notice in the paper, give opportunity for the public to address the Board if anyone has any concerns or comments.”
Gregg said once the Board makes the change “we'll have to send a precinct card to every voter in those precincts to notify them of the change.”
The changes would not affect voting for state House District 120, represented by Republican Houston Gaines, and House District 121, represented by Republican Marcus Wiedower.
North Oconee would be in Gaines’s District, with the remaining three precincts in Wiedower’s District. At present, Bogart and Marswood Hall precincts are in the 120th District, with the remaining six precincts in Wiedower’s 121st District.
Early voting will continue to be at the county Administrative Building, on Macon Highway north of Watkinsville.
Consequences Of Changes
According to Gregg, based on analysis she did “a little bit ago,” Oconee Central will have 19,061 voters (55.6 percent) after the merger.
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| Current Precinct Map |
South Oconee will have 3,717 (10.8 percent).
Dark Corner will have 4,465 (13.0 percent).
Oconee Northeast will have 7,058 (20.6 percent).
That is a total is 34,301 active and inactive voters.
In her director’s report, Gregg said that the November total of registered voters was 34,352 in November. Of those, 32,343 are Active, and 2,009 are Inactive.
City Elections, Official Notice
The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration runs the elections for Watkinsville, Bishop, and North High Shoals under intergovernmental agreements between the cities and the county, and the precinct consolidation will not affect elections in those cities.
Bogart runs its own elections.
In 2019, the Board of Elections and Registration merged what had been the Annex and City Hall precincts into a single precinct, called City Hall.
Even before that merger, the City Hall Precinct extended beyond the city boundaries.
Two separate advertisements are scheduled to appear in the upcoming edition of the Enterprise, the county’s legal organ.
One announces the plans to consolidate Bogart and Marswood Hall into Oconee Northeast.
The second announces the plan to combine the Civic Center, City Hall, North Oconee, and Bishop precincts into the Oconee Central precinct.
The advertisements state that the purpose of the consolidation is “to reduce the cost to taxpayers by saving on ballot printing, election supply costs, poll worker payroll, and other election expenses. This recommendation is also based on the steady increase in Advance Voting over the past four years.”
A hearing will be held at the next Board meeting at 5 p.m. on Jan. 21, 2025, at the Oconee County Administrative Building, 7635 Macon Highway, north of Watkinsville, according to the advertisement.
“Anyone wishing to object to this consolidation may do so in writing, stating the reason for such objection,” the advertisement states.
Comments should be returned to the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration, 7635 Macon Highway, Watkinsville, or mailed to 7635 Macon Highway, Suite 200, Watkinsville, GA 30677.
Filings must be received prior to the Jan. 21 meeting of the Board.
Voter Challenges
From Sept. 8 to 19, Stephen Aleshire and Victoria Cruz filed challenges to the eligibility of the 75 voters that were scheduled to be discussed by the Board on Tuesday.
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| Assistant Director Jennifer Stone, Gregg, Hanley 12/3/2024 |
At its meeting on Oct. 1, the Board had reviewed the 75 challenges and voted to sustain the challenge in 66 of those cases and scheduled a hearing for Oct. 24 to allow those challenged to come forward and dispute the Board’s decision.
On Oct. 21 Judge Lott ruled that the county had violated the law when it held the hearing on Oct. 1 and enjoined the Board from taking any action that would prevent those voters from casting a ballot.
Hanley said on Tuesday he had learned that Heimel has filed a notice of appeal of Judge Lott’s ruling.
“Before we move forward on this,” he said, “I think we need to check with our attorneys to make sure that we're on solid legal footing to do that.”
The Board voted to table discussion of the 75 challenged voters.
Gregg had prepared and distributed analysis she and others in her office had done of the 75 voters on the lists submitted by Aleshire and Cruz.
The sheet shows that two of the names already had been cancelled. In 34 cases, the letter sent to the voter had been returned as undeliverable, and in five cases the letter was forwarded to an address in another state.
Gregg said that in no case had any of the persons voted or had any contact with the county.
Comments By Cruz
Cruz and Aleshire attended the meeting on Tuesday, and Cruz addressed the Board at the beginning of the meeting during the allowed time for public comment.
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| Aleshire And Cruz 12/3/2024 |
“I am very upset about the way things ended with the challenges--the voter challenges that we brought before you,” she said.
“My husband (Aleshire) and I followed the rules of policy and did everything that we were supposed to do, filed on time, and yet there were actions taken to subvert that.”
“I apologize for any opportunity that was afforded those groups to intercede on what should have been something that the Board and the citizens--my husband and I--were trying to do with the voter rolls, which is just to clean them up and get people off the voter rolls who don't belong there,” she said.
Cruz said she saw that a decision on the 75 voters she and Aleshire had challenged was on the agenda “and I look forward to hearing what you have to say about that.”
Judge Lott had allowed Oconee County resident Susan Noakes and Common Cause Georgia to intervene in the original request for a writ of mandamus filed by Heimel. Heimel wanted the Court to force the Board to take action on an additional 228 voters whose registration Cruz had challenged in July.
The Board on Aug. 6 dismissed the challenge for all but two of those 228 challenged voters.
Judge Lott dismissed that request by Heimel.
In her notice of appeal filed on Nov. 26, Heimel said that the decision by Judge Lott is appealable to the Court of Appeals for six reasons, including that “the judge misinterpreted the law” and “the judge did not have subject matter jurisdiction in the case.”
Video
The video below is of the Dec. 3 meeting of the Board of Elections and Registration. The meeting took place in the County Administrative Building.
Cruz began her comments at 1:18 in the video.
Discussion of consolidation of precincts begins at 6:10 in the video.
Discussion of the 75 voter challenges is at 18:15 in the video.
1 comment:
I would hope that in advance of the next election, the BOER invest in voter education/reminders beyond the obligatory FB posting or the precinct card. Invariably, voters that don't follow county events on a day by day basis will show up on election day and wonder why their polling location was closed.
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