MINOT—Tuesday, Dec. 21, Ward County Commissioners agreed to select the Minot State University (MSU) Dome and Sawyer City Hall as new polling locations for primary and general elections.
The board is awaiting approval from MSU and Sawyer to confirm the new polling locations in 2022. According to the North Dakota Century Code, polling locations must be established by at least 64 days prior to an election, therefore the board technically has until April 11, 2022, to resolve this matter before the primary in June.
When explaining the two new options for polling sites, Ward County Auditor Miranda Haman said, “The reason we are putting them on there tentatively for now, the Auditorium does have district volleyball in November so they cannot house the election in November, so I'd like to keep it the same for June and November if possible, so… waiting on confirmation on that. Also wanting to know if the board is okay with using both centers instead of the regular polling locations. This is what we did in the general [election], we did not have one out in Sawyer in the general, we had the other 5 including the Dome because we had the Auditorium [available at the time].”
The County Administration Building is the designated site for early voting, whereas the following locations in the chart below will be for the primary and general elections (granted that the MSU Dome and Sawyer City Hall are approved).
“We could use them [the Auditorium] in June, but I think that would confuse voters if we use that in June and then switched to somewhere else in November,” stated the Auditor.
Vice Chair John Pietsch replied, “I think that the Dome would be a good replacement for the Auditorium if we can’t use it. You’re right, we shouldn’t confuse the voters by sending them to different places for the primary and regular [general] election. So, if we can get the dome, I would recommend that we do that.”
Regarding 2021 redistricting that took place throughout the State, Ward County has a map available with the new redistricting boundaries. Overall, the majority of Ward County remains unaffected, however those who lived on the border of their districts may want to look at the new boundaries [link here].
An approval to establish multiple precincts within district 3, 4, 38, and 40 for the upcoming 2022 election cycle was postponed by the board, after Pietsch’s recommendation to wait for legislators to have an opportunity to weigh in on the matter.
The County Commissioners plan to finalize their decision on the precincts during their next meeting scheduled for Dec. 29, 9:00 a.m., at the Commissioner’s Chambers in the Ward County Administrative building. [Recent Agenda Here]
