Kootenai County commissioners may adopt precinct boundary changes

COEUR d’ALENE — Kootenai County commissioners will consider adopting changes to several voting precinct boundaries next week.

If the boundary changes are approved, 1,479 of Kootenai County’s nearly 110,000 registered voters will change precincts and 496 voters will change voting locations. Affected voters will be notified of changes to their precinct or polling place before the May 20 election. 

Elections manager Asa Gray outlined the proposed changes Tuesday, saying the boundary shifts will help address the growing population in the Athol and Spirit Lake areas while complying with legislative district boundaries. 

Proposed changes include a shift of the boundary between precincts 519 and 520 to more closely follow the boundary between the Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene school districts. Additional boundary shifts between precincts 302 and 303 will reduce ballot styles for poll workers in those precincts, Gray said. 

Elections staff also proposed the creation of a new precinct, 209. The new precinct would include part of what is currently precinct 203. 

Melanie Vander Feer, who represents precinct 203 on the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, objected to the county changing the boundaries of her precinct. The precinct currently contains 1,905 registered voters, making it the sixth largest in the county and would contain 1,423 registered voters after the proposed change. 

“I would appreciate it if you leave my 203 precinct alone,” Vander Feer said. “I’ve been working hard at learning that area.” 

Gray said the proposal was made for practical reasons. 

“When we looked at taking a chunk from 203 ... my goal was to take a geographic chunk that would not interfere with the city of Athol and would be easily understandable by road boundaries,” he said. 

Elections staff also proposed dissolving precinct 523 into precinct 513. 

Gray said precinct 523 exists because a court order required the county to create a precinct that matched the boundaries of a proposed water district. That precinct is made up of five parcels of land and contains a single registered voter. 

“We have a precinct that now exists that we don’t want to have exist going forward for multiple reasons, including logistics and the privacy of that person’s vote,” he said. 

Commissioners will consider the boundary changes March 11.