Cook combines suburban precincts

Cook County is eliminating about 15 percent of its suburban voting precincts by merging some of them together, but Clerk David Orr says the disruption will be minimal for next year's elections and most voters won't notice a difference.

Orr said the county will save $750,000 a year by eliminating 353 suburban precincts, going to 1,937 from the current 2,290. Yet in most of those cases, more than 200, the precincts will be lost by combining them with another precinct using the same polling place.

The Cook County Board approved the reduction this summer.

"We were charged with identifying ways to trim our budgets," Orr said. "By merging precincts with others in the same polling location or combining precincts where there are too few voters, we will be able to save three-quarters of a million dollars every year with little to no impact on voters."

Orr said the growing popularity of early voting and absentee ballots eased the reduction. Almost a quarter of all county votes in last year's presidential election were cast before Election Day.

"The trend toward pre-Election Day voting means precincts can have larger numbers of voters because many of them will not appear in the precinct on Election Day," Orr said.

The changes will take effect before the upcoming Feb. 2 primary, and all households will receive a mailed notice before that notifying voters of their designated polling place.

Voters also can see for themselves by doing a search on the county's voterinfonet.com Web site.

No district boundaries have changed, and no change will result in a precinct being divided between two municipalities.