Commissioners approve new voter precinct map

COEUR d’ALENE — Kootenai County commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday to approve a new map that includes three new voter precincts.

When Idaho’s legislative district map is redrawn every 10 years, Kootenai County also reexamines voter precincts to keep them balanced.

The previous map had 70 voter precincts. The revised one has 73, largely because of the county’s growing population.

Geographic Information Systems Manager Dave Christianson said the goal was to have between 1,300 and 1,700 registered voters per precinct, with a target of 1,500.

Christianson said he also aimed to leave existing precinct boundaries in place as much as possible.

Idaho Code states that precinct boundaries must follow visible, recognizable physical features on the ground, including streets, railroad tracks, streams and lakes.

Exceptions are made when a precinct boundary coincides with a city, county, reservation or school district boundary that does not follow a visible feature.

Voter precincts cannot cross legislative district boundaries.

Known future growth was taken into account when rebalancing voter precincts in Kootenai County.

When it was reasonable to do so, Christianson said, elections staff considered school district and city boundaries, in order to limit the number of unique ballots. That reduces the costs of elections.

Driving distance to polling locations, as well as the ability of polling places to handle additional voters, were also factors.

Kootenai County Clerk Jim Brannon emphasized that the process of balancing voter precincts is apolitical.

“We did not look at political affiliation at all,” he said. “To do that is wrong. If a (person) has been drawn out of his or her precinct, I’m sorry, but you can run in the new one.”

Christianson agreed.

“I simply counted points inside of polygons,” he said. “That’s all I looked at.”

The county will begin updating precinct maps ahead of May’s primary elections.

Voters and prospective candidates will soon be able to use an online tool to search for their address and confirm their precinct.