CLEARFIELD – A debate regarding voting precincts will be heard in court.
At Thursday’s special meeting of the Clearfield County Commissioners, Commissioner John Sobel announced that a hearing regarding voting precincts in Bradford Township will be held at 1 p.m., Jan. 9.
The question regarding the precincts has been discussed for several months.
According to previously published Gant news reports, both the Pennsylvania Election Code and an order from President Judge Fredric Ammerman required the board to review the township’s petition to review the precincts and to present a recommendation.
According to the article, the commissioners, along with Solicitor Kim Kesner, previously reviewed the township’s petition and it raised a legal concern because any new precinct must have boundaries with “clearly visible physical features that conform with census blocks from the most recently completed decennial federal census.”
There have been questions about maps and the actual boundary designating the precincts within the township.
According to previously-published reports, on March 13, the Election Board decided to keep Bradford Township’s precinct boundaries, as defined by a court order issued in 1985, which upset township officials and residents.
The order granted the consolidation of the “existing Bigler precinct and Jackson precinct, east of Route 970, into one to be known as the Bigler precinct.”
Secondly, it granted the consolidation of “Woodland and Jackson precinct, west of Route 970, into one precinct to be known as Woodland precinct.”
From 1998 through 2001, the county completed a 911 project. Its purpose was to assign locations/directions to every household in Clearfield County.
Prior to this, residences, especially in the rural areas, were assigned route numbers. This made it virtually impossible for county officials to determine where voters were residing within an election district.
The precinct issues arose after the last presidential election in 2016 when there were allegations of fraud across the country. State officials were mandated to ensure the validity of voter registrations.
County officials maintain voter registration records and were in turn mandated to verify voters’ physical addresses and whether or not they were voting at the correct precinct.
It was discovered then that some voters were possibly not voting in the correct precincts in Clearfield County, which resulted in a notice being mailed out. The commissioners previously directed the Election Office to halt mailing notices until a final decision was made.
In March, the staff was directed to resume their mailings to the affected voters following a special Election Board meeting. Bradford Township has two election precincts, which are Bradford First and Bradford Second.
In October of 2017, Bradford Second Precinct had 1,164 registered voters to just 569 in the Bradford Township First Precinct. As of Sept. 26, Bradford First had 994 registered voters and Bradford Second had 714.