During the next citywide election, more than 70,000 registered voters in Cleveland may have to find their way to a new polling location. It’s a change that has Cleveland City Council members concerned about voters being caught off guard.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections recently released maps reflecting new ward boundaries set by council, bringing the number of wards down from 17 to 15. Elections board staff created the boundaries for new precincts within those wards and set the locations where voters in those areas would cast their ballots.
Council members are questioning why so many voters were assigned to new polling locations, even in precincts that didn’t change much.
Elections board officials say council’s worries could have been avoided if they had heeded warnings to get the maps finalized earlier, which would have left more time before the May special election for council to review the changes.
Even with the friction, both council and the elections board are working to get the information out to voters and minimize any confusion.
Has your Cleveland polling location changed? Check here.
On the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections site, you can type in your name and birth date and find your polling location. You can also get the location by calling 216-443-8683.
Same polling places, different voters
City Council Member Charles Slife said at first he and many of his colleagues noted only small changes to polling locations. It was only after talking to people at a Democratic club in his ward that he realized voters were being shifted to new locations. In Slife’s ward, about 42% of voters – 7,000 people – were assigned to different polling places, he said. He came to that figure after comparing old voter rosters from before the change with the new ones. Citywide, after accounting for voters who registered since the last election — nearly 30% of voters were assigned new polling locations.
For example, 976 people who used to vote at St. Mel’s Parish in West Park will now be assigned to vote at Our Lady Of Angels about one and half miles away. About 1,120 people who used to vote at Our Lady of Angels will now vote at St. Mel.
On Thursday, City Council released charts based on an analysis by Slife. In communities that have historically faced voter turnout challenges, anywhere between 30% and 45% of voters will be assigned new locations, he found.
How many voters were assigned to a new precinct, they found, varied significantly.
In a section of Slavic Village, which is currently in Ward 12, about 35% of voters will have to report to new locations to cast a ballot, according to council’s analysis. In other areas, such as Old Brooklyn, less than 1% of voter precincts are changing.
Elections officials: Council delayed the process
Council had the data from the U.S. Census that it needed to draw the new ward boundaries since August 2021, elections officials told Signal Cleveland Thursday. In November 2024, the board of elections told council that it needed to pass the legislation establishing new ward boundaries by Dec. 17 if members “wanted to review the modifications to precinct boundaries and comment,” according to a statement from community outreach manager Mike West.
Council approved the new ward map on Jan. 6, more than 40 months after the Census data was final. About 161,000 voters ended up in new wards, and about 80,000 stayed in the same ward, according to the board. (Council members pointed out that in some cases, even if a ward number changed, the precinct boundaries in the new ward were nearly identical.)
After the council approved the maps, elections staff got to work setting the new precinct boundaries within the wards, a process that is complex, board director Anthony Perlatti explained during board meetings in January and February.
By law precincts cannot contain more than 1,400 residents, and the board tries to cap them at 1,150, to allow for growth (they are set for about a decade). Precincts cannot cross ward boundaries, and the board tries to avoid “split” precincts, so that residents in each precinct all vote for the same county, state and federal officials.
The work took “weeks and weeks,” Perlatti said at the February meeting. The result was 254 precincts, 12 of them split — down from 332 precincts in the old map with 11 split.
Getting the word out to voters
At this point, Slife said that he doesn’t expect that the Board of Elections will make changes to polling locations. But he wants to make sure people are aware of the changes when they go to vote in the May election for a statewide ballot measure and this fall, when residents will vote in city council contests and in the mayor’s race.
Council is asking the board for additional explanations for some of the changes and clearer communication with voters before the election.
West said that the board has already mailed a voter information guide to all voter households in the city and will send another in mid-April. The board has also re-started its Library Voter Education Campaign (see dates and locations here).
