By Stephanie Vaccaro, Staff Writer
Stephanie VaccaroStaff Writer
MONTGOMERY Increases in population have many effects, one of which is the need to redraw district lines in municipalities.
Montgomery Township experienced a 27.3 percent increase in population from 2000 to 2010, rising from 17,481 to 22,254. The substantial risein population is driving the redistricting.
”With the adjustments we made, we had an additional three districts, so we went from 16 to 19 districts,” said Donna Kukla, clerk forMontgomery Township. “A couple of the other districts have beenchanged somewhat in order to reduce the numbers in those districts.”
”The election districts in 13 municipalities needed boundary adjustments due either to excessive voter registration counts or low voter turnout,” said Ms. Kukla. “The approved boundary adjustments were compelled by Title 19 of the New Jersey Election Laws. The law requires an election district to be split if the total voter registration count in that district exceeds 750 registered voters.Title 19 also requires any election district that has a voter turnout of less than 250 voters for two consecutive general elections to be combined with a contiguous election district.”
”There are only certain years you can do a redistricting,” said Ms. Kukla. If there are over 750 voters in a district in a year when the Census is conducted, those districts will likely be split, said Ms. Kukla.
For Montgomery, it has no bearing on the election of the Township Committee because it is elected by all of Montgomery instead of each district.
But the impact it does have is in terms of the number of voters at particular polling stations. “The only thing that it really affects is the population in each district to make sure that we’re not overwhelmed in certain polling locations,” said Ms. Kukla. “It prevents overcrowding at the polls.”
Additionally, district lines can be altered because certain areas become under-populated over time, but this is not the case for Montgomery this year, Ms. Kukla explained. Many towns in Somerset County had well under the minimum number, so they combined districts, said Ms. Kukla.
”We’ve added so many voters that we had to split districts,” said Ms. Kukla. There were minor adjustments in some areas because of major adjustments in others, she said.
”I had four districts in the township that were well over 1,000,” said Ms. Kukla. “We made some changes in 1 and 13.”

