Say goodbye to Morning Sun, Rossville and Lucy as voting precinct names in the county’s six suburban towns and cities.

The names of every election precinct in Shelby County will change with the May county primaries, and as many as a third of the county’s voters could have a new election day polling place and/or precinct in the process.

The realignment of the precincts is a function of the once-a-decade redistricting process for the Shelby County Commission, the Tennessee General Assembly and the U.S. House.

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It is the first extensive precinct realignment in two decades.

By state law, the district lines for the state Senate and the County Commission cannot split a voting precinct.

“It’s a really complicated process, one that the staff worked on a long time,” Shelby County Election Commission Chairman Brent Taylor said during The Daily Memphian’s On The Record podcast.

“We did take the opportunity while we were realigning precincts to try to correct some of the population disparities that exist in some of the precincts,” he said. “We had some precincts that had fewer than a thousand voters in them. And we had some precincts that had north of 6,000 voters in them.”

Unlike districts, precincts don’t have to be approximately the same size in terms of population. But by state law, no precinct is supposed to have more than 6,000 voters in it.

What is currently called Arlington 01 precinct as well as Lakeland 01 and Morning Sun 01 each have more than 6,200 voters within their borders according to the Election Commission’s latest precinct-by-precinct totals from December.

There are numerous other precincts across the county with more than 5,000 voters.

There are no limits on how small a precinct can be. Several have slightly more than 1,000 voters.

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“We eliminated some of the precincts and reduced the number of precincts there are countywide and tried to make their shape a little more logical — tried to get it in a square where the voting place will be in the center of that square,” Taylor said.

The precinct changes won’t be official until the new state Senate districts are signed by Gov. Bill Lee. The Shelby County Commission approved its new district lines in November 2021.

Election commissioners were briefed this week on the likely changes to the set of 134 precincts that will likely grow to include smaller precincts dealing with such oddities as “fingers” of land on maps, representing streets within a commission district under the new redistricting map.

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That includes two blocks of Dogwood Road in Germantown, where about 115 people live. Their election day precinct polling place is at the end of the finger of land on the precinct map. However, they are no longer in that precinct and would have to vote elsewhere.

Another finger on Morning Sun Road means voters on one side are in a different precinct from their neighbors across the street. A total of 20 voters are involved in that situation.

Another precinct is now where three state Senate districts meet.

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Still another precinct was described by county elections Administrator Linda Phillips as a “bizarre little triangle” in which there are no voters.

The Election Commission has two remedies to those problems — create a new precinct or change the County Commission district lines.

The change to the district lines would involve slight changes Taylor described as a “nip and tuck” that would have to be approved by the Shelby County Commission.

Taylor identified eight “nip and tucks” to take to the County Commission before he ran across the state law that forbids changing the district lines of a County Commission or other county legislative body in the same year the seats on those bodies are on the ballot.

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“That obviously is designed to keep county commissions from drawing out opponents in an election year,” Taylor said. “I understand the reason behind having such a statute. But it may mean, at least for this year, having really small precincts that only have a dozen voters in it.”

Any change in precincts for voters requires a notice be mailed to voters at those addresses informing them of the new precinct and election day polling place.

In addition to the notices, Taylor says those running in the new districts will also make getting the word out a priority and a part of their campaign messages.

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Taylor is a former Memphis City Council member and Shelby County commissioner as well as a Congressional candidate in the past.

“As we get into campaign season, obviously the county commissioners and school board members, state house candidates, state senate candidates — they will all make sure that every voter in their district is aware of whose district they are in. We rely on the campaigns to do a lot of education.”

Brent Taylor
Shelby County Election Commission Chairman

“As we get into campaign season, obviously the county commissioners and school board members, state house candidates, state senate candidates — they will all make sure that every voter in their district is aware of whose district they are in,” he said. “We rely on the campaigns to do a lot of education.”

By comparison, the path to a new labeling system for all of the precincts — those returning and those newly created — is much simpler.

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Each precinct will get a four-digit identifier. The first two digits are the County Commission district the voter lives in — one of 13 districts that cover the entire county. The second two digits are the number of the precinct within that district.

There is a lettering system for precincts that have multiple State House and Congressional districts which are allowed to split precincts, meaning voters within the same precinct may vote in different state House and Congressional races depending on where they live in relation to those district lines.

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Phillips says most voters don’t pay attention to the precinct numbers and that will probably remain the case with the popularity of early voting.

Taylor says politicos will notice and it will mean they have to learn the new system. He already reached out to the suburban mayors as well.

“I have been told by our election officials that the naming system we had actually went all the way back to the Crump era,” he said of political boss E.H. Crump, who dominated the city’s politics for the first half of the 20th century until his death in 1954. He dominated state politics as well for a time.

“It was really confusing to those who were not familiar with our precincts,” Taylor said.

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In this case, a voter or anyone else interested can look for a particular commission district on the map and locate it more easily than going through a list of election day polling places to go with the precinct numbers.

“This matches what the rest of the state has used for a number of years,” Taylor said. “We were really the only county out of 95 using precinct names.”

Phillips also told election commissioners this week that she would like to move away from using schools as election day and early voting polling sites, citing the inconvenience to the schools of securing a gymnasium or other area of the school that is off limits to teachers and students if an election is during the school year.

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The recommendations for changes in polling place is expected at the February Election Commission meeting and could include dropping Agricenter as an early voting site starting in mid-April when early voting opens in advance of the May 3 county primary election day.

“No one lives close to it,” Phillips said, referring to heat maps the Election Commission uses to show where voters are. “We’re looking at some better locations that will be more convenient for voters. It’s a lousy polling place.”

When early voting began in Shelby County 20 years ago, Agricenter was the most popular voting site by voter turnout until the Election Commission began adding more sites across the county.

Voters can cast their ballots at any of the early voting sites regardless of what Shelby County precinct they live in. On election day, a voter must vote at the polling place for their specific precinct.