Voters from Lodi and New Marshfield won’t have to drive all the way to Alexander High School to vote this fall, as the Athens County Board of Elections reversed a proposed polling location move earlier this year.
Residents of Nelsonville won’t be heading to a new polling location either, Athens County BOE Deputy Director Penny Brooks said.
A proposal to move polling locations from Lodi, New Marshfield and Waterloo to Alexander High School for the primary election outraged some residents of those rural areas in March.
Some members of the Board of Elections also had concerns with the move.
“The commute from Shade all the way to Alexander seems kind of unbelievable to me,” Democtratic Board of Elections member John Haseley said at a public hearing in March.
Residents of Alexander and Lodi will keep their old polling locations in the upcoming election, Brooks said. Residents of New Marshfield and Waterloo will vote at the senior center in New Marshfield.
The proposal, part of a directive from the Ohio Secretary of State to consolidate polling locations, also would’ve required residents of Nelsonville’s first to fourth precincts, Buchtel Village and York Township to vote at the C & J Tax location. That decision was also reversed after the March public hearing, Brooks said.
Brooks said the Secretary of State suggested consolidating because it’s “easier and better,” but added that resident feedback might have been part of the Board’s reversal.
The biggest change in November will be a polling location move from the soon-to-be demolished East Side Elementary to the Athens Public Library, Brooks said.
