Think You Know Your Polling Place? Think Again

As many as 5,000 Greenfield residents could be in the wrong ward and run into inconveniences during the April 2012 spring election or the Greenfield School Board primary in February.

The misplaced residents are a result of redrawn maps during the state’s redistricting process and census data that included errors.

Greenfield City Clerk Jennifer Goergen said her staff is working on correcting the problem, but doing so is tedious and comes on top of in addition to regularly scheduled elections.

“I don’t want to speculate what the problem is, but the maps in the (state’s voter database) are not true to the maps we have and it’s causing problems,” Goergen explained to the Common Council on Tuesday.

“Some voters who are on boundary lines or close to boundary lines are not showing up in their right ward. The worst report has about 5,000 voters not in the right district or ward.”

Goergen said there are errors with the aldermanic districts and the school district boundaries. She said some boundary lines have split parcels of land with a garage in one ward and the house in another, or even split restaurants in half.

She said clerks statewide have had training to correct the errors but in Greenfield the process involves finding and then moving all 5,000 residents and entering them one by one where they belong in the database.

“We’re hoping we can do that by Jan. 30 when we have to run ballot styles,” Goergen said. “We’ll do our best, but there’s a lot of work to be done.”

Goergen said she requested help from the Government Accountability Board with the process, which offered interns to assist with the relocating of thousands of citizens in the database.

And if the corrections aren’t made in time?

“People will be able to vote, but they might not show up in the correct poll book,” Goergen said. “If you’re in Ward 6 you might show up in Ward 5, if you’re near a boundary.”