Charlotte Mullis-Morgan is elections administrator for Hamilton CountyThe Tennessee General Assembly may have thwarted the goal of the Hamilton County Elections Commission administrator to save $75,000 by reducing the number of precincts based on the city and county’s new districts.
Election Administrator Charlotte Mullis-Morgan won’t know until she sees a final draft of the new state maps, which she expects to receive this week.
Meanwhile, an early draft of a precinct reduction plan would have cut or merged as many as 29 precincts throughout the county. But any previous attempts to draw precincts have been scrapped as the commission awaits new maps to replace the incorrect ones previously sent by the state.
Every 10 years state and local governments redraw district lines to account for population shifts measured by the U.S. census. The state recently completed its new lines. Hamilton County and Chattanooga finished theirs last year.
Mullis-Morgan said local officials carefully drew the lines to eliminate precincts with low numbers of registered voters, with the possibility of saving up to $75,000. But now she doesn’t know if that will be possible.