Lakeville to Add New Voting Precincts, Shuffle Existing Boundaries

's City Council is expected to approve a plan on Monday to dramatically change the city's voting precincts and boundaries for 2012.

The city will be adding three new voting precincts, going from 14 to 17, and many of the boundaries of the previously existing locations are being dramatically altered. (.)

The changes stem from the by the Minnesota Supreme Court. By law, city governments must review all precinct boundaries and polling locations following the redistricting process. Lakeville had until April 3 to accomplish the changes.

The plan isn't official until approved by the City Council, but the group is expected to do so at it's regular meeting on March 19.

In February, . In addition, precincts can't be split, meaning a precinct can't have voters from two legislative districts.

City Administrator Steven Mielke said Lakeville's City Council was actually out front of redistricting, and had approved a plan in May of 2011 to add three new voting precincts due to the city's increased population since 2002 causing crowding at some of the existing polling sites. Each precinct is roughly divided evenly so as to have 2,000 to 3,000 registered voters.

Under the , Precincts 6, 7 and 8 would be in legislative District 56B, Precincts 16 and 17 would be in legislative District 57A, and the remaining Precincts (1-5, and 9-15) would be in Lakeville's main legislative District 58A.

will have more on this story tomorrow after the council votes on the plan.