In the office of Will County Clerk Jan Gould, the summer doldrums should be nonexistent.
The population boom of the last two years and the logistical questions over how Illinois plans to meet the mandates of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 should keep election-related activity inside Gould’s office as feverish as the weather.
Gould’s office has started creating 24 voting precincts and realigning boundaries of several others to deal with the huge increases in voter registration in 10 townships.
Gould estimated that by late next month, as many as 7,000 of the county’s 200,200 registered voters will receive new voter registration cards, along with a letter explaining the changes and a map marking new polling places.
The changes, which will be in effect for Nov. 7 school board elections, will increase the number of precincts to 309 from 285. State law requires that the number of voters in individual precincts be uniform and not larger than 800 registered voters.
In Will County, the price of uniformity comes to about $2,400 per precinct and more than $68,000 overall, according to Gould.
The funding required to redraw and administer the revised precinct boundaries in Crete, DuPage, Frankfort, Green Garden, Lockport, New Lenox, Plainfield, Reed, Troy and Wheatland Townships was approved last week by the County Board.
“It’s a lot of work,” Gould said. “Thousands of (registration) cards have to be physically changed. We have to make new maps, buy a lot of new equipment, find additional storage . . . and we’ll need (to train) a hundred and some additional (election) judges.”
The biggest gain in number of precincts will be in DuPage Township, where eight will be created. Green Garden will go from one to two.
“What we look at is the number of people registered, and we also look at the ballots cast in the presidential and the gubernatorial elections. Then we just take (and split) those (precincts) with the highest numbers,” Gould said. “We used 1,000 (registered voters) as our criteria (for splitting).”
Gould, who noted about 55 precincts have been split in Will County since 1981, said this is the most ever at one time in the county. “I think at one point we did 15,” she said.
All the changes should be complete and the notices sent out about the time the effects of the federally mandated motor-voter registration law begins in Illinois.
Gould is less sure about the logistics of implementing that act now that Gov. Jim Edgar has decided to abandon the state’s opposition to federal law, which requires states to accept voter registrations that are mailed in or are made at public offices, such as driver’s service facilities.
Due to a legislative standoff and failure of the General Assembly to square the state’s election code with federal law, Illinois voters face the possibility of having a two-tiered registration system.
One set of voters would be able to vote in all elections; the other set would be able to vote only in federal elections.
Officials of the State Board of Elections are expected to present a draft of the state’s compliance plan Thursday when they appear before U.S. District Court Judge Milton Shadur in Chicago.
Gould said that a two-tiered registration system “could be confusing because when you register to vote, you assume that you are entitled to vote on everything.”
The split system also would be more expensive for local election authorities to administer, requiring new computer software, retraining of judges and “a complete change in (the computerization of) our voter registration,” Gould said.
“It looks like I’m going to be very busy,” she said.
