As a result of redistricting, Fairfax County is proposing changes to its voting precincts, adjusting boundaries, consolidating and creating new precincts and moving or establishing polling places.
As required by state law, these adjustments and changes focus on eliminating split precincts before the June 21 primary election. To meet this deadline, today the Board of Supervisors approved a March 8 public hearing on the proposal.
Precincts must reside within a single magisterial, state senate, delegate and congressional district under a state law passed before last year’s redistricting efforts. The Virginia Supreme Court’s approved redistricting plan for state legislative and congressional districts created numerous split precincts in Fairfax County that must now be resolved.
The proposed changes involve 154 precincts: 54 precincts were split by redistricting and another 100 would be impacted as a result of the county’s efforts to remedy these split precincts. In total, 29,000 voters — or less than 4% of the county’s registered voters — would be affected by the proposed changes. If adopted, the Office of Elections will directly notify these voters by mail.
To develop its proposed plan, the Office of Elections followed four guidelines:
- Disrupt the fewest voters possible.
- Ensure that affected precinct boundaries and polling places meet all legal requirements, including those for location and accessibility.
- Confirm that polling places have adequate facilities to accommodate voters, including parking.
- Minimize the number of extremely small or extremely large precincts.
Once the Board of Supervisors adopts any precinct or polling place changes, they must satisfy the Rights of Voters Act, and the plan proposes doing so by seeking review from the Virginia attorney general as permitted under the act. The attorney general’s process could take up to 60 days.
For more information, contact the Fairfax County Office of Elections at 703-222-0776, TTY 711.
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