The Mt. Laurel community will likely find out in the coming weeks whether there will be changes in polling places for Election Day in Mt. Laurel.
Township clerk Meredith Tomczyk said the Burlington County Board of Elections was scheduled to visit Mt. Laurel and inspect prospective polling locations to see if they can be approved for use beginning in November’s general election. The township is looking to move all of the polling places out of Mt. Laurel school buildings.
“The county will be out (Aug. 18) to inspect the new locations,” Tomczyk said.
Tomczyk said the inspections will check to see whether each location will be able the size of the designated districts. All of the locations will also be checked for handicap accessibility.
The township began to work on moving polling places out of schools in June after Parkway Elementary School received a threat during the primary election day on June 2. On that day, the school received a phone call from a man who claimed he was in the school with a gun. The school was locked down and voting suspended while police searched the building. No threat was found and the school and polls were able to reopen later in the morning.
If approved, most of the voting districts in Mt. Laurel will likely see their polling place moved. Residents in 15 of the 27 districts in the township currently vote in a school building. The polling places for the remaining 12 districts are located in areas such as the Mt. Laurel Library, Mt. Laurel Community Center, Mt. Laurel EMS Building and fire district headquarters.
The township’s proposal would take all of the districts currently voting in schools and move them to places already listed as polling locations as well as new locations.
“We would be adding more districts to the township community center, a fire station, adding to the EMS buildings, and one of the Mt. Laurel churches was nice enough to offer their facility,” Tomczyk said.
Tomczyk said the township is not releasing a list of the places it proposed for polling locations prior to the inspections. A list of the new polling locations for each district will be released following board of election approval.
Mt. Laurel has tried to get polling places moved out of the school buildings in the past. In 2005, the Mt. Laurel Schools board of education presented a study to the Burlington County board of elections to move polling places after an incident on Election Day 2004 at Fleetwood Elementary School where a suspect threw a bag of white powder on the gym floor and then fled the scene.
Tomczyk said the township is expected a decision on what locations have been approved as polling places shortly after the inspections.
“They’ll let us know by the end of August,” she said.
