Request By:
Mr. Fred B. Creasey
Executive Director
Kentucky Association of Counties
205 Capital Avenue
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Walter C. Herdman, Asst. Deputy Attorney General
This is in response to your letter of November 23, 1982 in which you refer to the 1982 amendment to KRS 67.045 requiring the reapportionment of magisterial districts in each county in 1982. You further relate that the act provides that no voting precinct shall be in more than one district. Under the circumstances you raise the following question:
"My question is, suppose a fiscal court adopts a reapportionment plan that meets the above provisions, yet divides one or more voting precincts. Does that mean the county board of elections shall redraw precinct lines to comply or is the fiscal court not in compliance for dividing the precinct (s)?"
Both the reapportionment act, KRS 67.045 and KRS 117.055, prohibit a precinct line from bisecting or crossing a magisterial district line and particularly following reapportionment as required by the act. Following reapportionment the county board of elections must alter any precinct that has been crossed by virtue of reapportionment in order to conform with the requirements of the referred to statutes.
Though election precincts are required to be composed of reasonably compact areas, they are not required to have equal population. In fact, KRS 117.055 does not even require that precincts be limited to 700 registered voters having voted in the last election. The pertinent provision reads as follows:
"The county board of elections shall review election precinct boundaries as often as necessary. Without exception they shall review the boundaries of all election precincts exceeding seven hundred (700) votes cast in the last regular election prior to each primary election. Consideration to the division of said election precincts should be based on the anticipated growth factor within the specified boundaries; however, the county board of elections shall not be prohibited from dividing election precincts in excess of seven hundred (700) votes cast in the last regular election or less than seven hundred (700) votes cast in the last regular election if they elect to do so." (Emphasis added.)
The above quoted provision in KRS 117.055 is so worded as to permit the county board considerable leeway in rearranging the precincts throughout the county, and as you will observe it may divide a precinct that contains more than the 700 vote limitation or less as the case may be.
In any event, where reapportionment requires a present precinct to be bisected or crossed, the county board is mandatorily required to rearrange the precinct in conformance with the referred to statutory requirement.