How Big Are McHenry County Voting Precincts?
The McHenry County board recently increased the number of voting precincts to 223 from 212.
Last week, the McHenry County Board approved a new precinct map, which increased the number of voting precincts in the county from 212 to 223.
What is a precinct and why does it matter?
A precinct is a voting district. Your precinct determines where you go to vote on election day. Although the new map changes the precinct boundaries, it does not change the boundaries of county board, state house, state senate or congressional districts.
Accessibility is an important part of voting rights. Just as important as knowing when to vote is knowing where to vote, and the new map could change the polling location for many voters. Precinct size also matters because a polling place accommodating a larger number of voters could lead to longer wait times at the polls.
Why change the precinct boundaries?
The precinct boundaries in McHenry County had been more or less the same for several decades.
And many of them were much too large. In April 2021, 80.7% of McHenry County's voter precincts were violating a statute that mandated precincts contain between 500 and 800 registered voters. A new Illinois law changed the maximum precinct size to 1,200 voters, but 38.68% of McHenry County’s precincts were still over that limit during the April 2021 election.
While the new map was approved, the process was criticized for its speed and lack of transparency, and the maps themselves were criticized for containing errors and splitting neighborhoods and other voting districts. (Check out the new map proposal with comments for more details.)
How does this new map change the size of voting precincts?
We’re going to look at the changing size of the voting precincts—which was the impetus for the new map.
During the April 2021 election, the average size of a precinct was 1,122—a 9% increase from the November 2016 election. The addition of 11 precincts drops the average number of registered voters per precinct to 1,050.
Most townships either gained or kept the same number of precincts, but Algonquin lost five and McHenry lost one. Despite that, the average size of precincts in those townships remained similar.
From this chart, you can also see that Algonquin and McHenry were the only townships where the average number of registered voters per precinct increased, In McHenry, the average number of voters increased from 1,040 in the April 2021 election to 1,048 in 2022. In Algonquin, the average number of voters increased from 994 to 1,060.
The change in other townships was drastic. In Riley township, the average number of registered voters per precinct dropped from 2,261 to 1,086 with the split of the township into two precincts rather than one. Dunham township, which also went from one to two precincts, saw a decrease from 1,709 to 819 voters per precinct average.
Grafton township, which gained seven precincts in the new map, had a decrease in average voters per precinct from 1,348 to 1,088. Grafton’s 4th precinct was the largest in the county at 2,866 registered voters in the April 2021 election. The new map split that precinct into three.