JeffCo creates 2 new polling places for Hoover voters

Voters in two parts of Hoover will have new polling places for elections, starting with the Aug. 15 special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The Jefferson County Board of Registrars has split the precinct that voted at Hunter Street Baptist Church on John Hawkins Parkway due to long lines in the 2016 presidential election.

And people who voted at the former Berry High School campus on Columbiana Road now will start voting (in county, state and national elections) at the gymnasium at Shades Mountain Independent Church off Tyler Road.

The splitting of the Hunter Street Baptist precinct was necessary because the precinct had grown too large, said Barry Stephenson, chairman of the Jefferson County Board of Registrars. More than 9,000 people were registered to vote there, Stephenson said.

“It had grown over the last few years to an unreasonable number,” he said. “It reached a capacity point where we just couldn’t conduct an election in a proper fashion anymore.”

Pam Roberts, the chief poll inspector at Hunter Street who has been working at that location for 20 years, said the youth building at Hunter Street could handle most elections because only about 10 to 17 percent of registered voters would come to vote.

But controversial votes concerning tax increases, a lottery and the presidential election drew bigger crowds. In the 2016 presidential general election in November, 5,839 people voted at Hunter Street Baptist, Stephenson said. That’s more than 60 percent of the registered voters.

Roberts said she has neither seen that big of a turnout before, nor such long lines. “It was an experience,” she said.

Russell Pate, a resident of the Russet Woods community, said when he showed up to vote at Hunter Street at about 5:30 p.m., the line stretched 300 yards out the door and across the parking lot.

He stood in line for an hour before someone told him he could move up into a different line because of his last name, he said. Once he moved up, he was able to vote in 5-10 minutes, he said. If he had stayed where he was in line, he likely would have been there two more hours, he said.

“It was crazy,” Pate said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Roberts said when the polls were supposed to close at 7 p.m., there were still many people waiting in line. Sheriff’s deputies marked the end of the line at 7 p.m. to prevent more people from getting in line, but it still took until 9 p.m. to get everyone inside to vote, she said.

From now on, about half the people who were registered to vote at Hunter Street will move to a new polling place at the new Finley Center at the Hoover Metropolitan Complex.

Those 4,500 or so people all live on the south side of Interstate 459 between Stadium Trace Parkway and Parkwood Road, down to Morgan Road. That area includes Russet Woods and the Brock’s Gap sectors of Trace Crossings.

The other half of the Hunter Street voters — including Trace Crossings residents east of Stadium Trace Parkway, Lakeview, Paradise Acres and areas between Interstate 459 and John Hawkins Parkway on the west side of the John Hawkins Parkway interstate interchange — will stay at Hunter Street.

On the north side of Hoover, the former Berry High School campus no longer is available as a polling site because the campus is being renovated by the Vestavia Hills Board of Education for use as a middle school for grades 6-7 and junior high school for grades 8-9.

That voting precinct has about 4,400 voters, with about half coming from Hoover, about half from Vestavia Hills and a few unincorporated residents, Stephenson said.