The Macon County Planning Board voted unanimously on June 11 to recommend an at-large system for county redistricting efforts, furthering a conversation which should transfer back to commissioners after next month’s Planning Board meeting.
The Planning Board was tasked in April with discussing changes to how the Board of Commissioners is elected. The board has since discussed a series of options, including electing three commissioners from three districts with two at large, four commissioners from four districts with one at large, and establishing five Macon County districts with one commissioner from each.
Currently, Macon County is made up of three districts with Districts 1 and 3 electing one commissioner each and District 2 represented by three commissioners. Commissioners run at large, so everyone in Macon County votes for commissioners from each district.
District 1 is made up of the Ellijay, Sugarfork, Highlands and Flats precincts; District 3 includes Nantahala, Burningtown, Cartoogechaye and Cowee; and District 2 encompasses Iotla, Millshoal, Union, Smithbridge and three Franklin precincts.
At the May 7 meeting, Planning Director Joe Allen suggested the board determine first if they wanted to have commissioners elected at large or have them elected by residents of their districts. The board discussed this at the June 11 meeting.
Public comments
Lisa Walker advocated for equally sized districts with each district electing its own representative. She said, “A fair, district-only model provides better representation for geographically concentrated areas.”
Walker added that a three- or four-district system with two or one at-large candidates would necessitate District 1 and District 3 being expanded to include precincts that currently exist in District 2. She said this could result in the current residents of District 2 area having disproportionate influence on which commissioner candidates run, while the at-large candidates could result in Districts 1 and 3 having disproportionate influence for their population size.
“Why would we build a model that can set us up for failure in the future?” Walker said. “I respectfully request that you focus the Planning Board efforts on a district-only model, and I respectfully request that this board holds an advertised public hearing to let the public weigh in on what they want.”
Karen Smith, the chair of the Union Precinct Democratic Party, echoed Walker’s comments, adding she would like to see the group consider precinct populations and first examine how those precincts would be organized before proceeding.
Dr. Gus Wilde said he has heard “plenty of explanations of why the system is broken,” but does not see the system as producing anything other “excellent county commissioners.”
“I can’t think in all those years, where I’ve seen an instance of one commissioner pushing an agenda, or a policy or a program that favors their district over the rest of the county,” he said. “It’s easy to criticize the system and point out flaws, but I’ll say in the 30 years that I’ve been here and coming to these meetings, it has worked fine … I’m not sure how much we need to do to fix that. I think it’s hard to argue with the results.”
At-large voting
Board members went on to discuss whether they wanted district or at-large voting. Amy Patterson, a Town of Highlands Commissioner and board liaison, said Highlands would like to see only the members of its district voting. She said with at-large voting, residents would not feel like they have accountability from their representatives.
"Which to me is important,” she said. “At-large voting, when we've got 20% of the population in District 1 – we may prefer one of the candidates, and yet the other 80% of the population of the rest of the county prefers a different person."
Commissioner John Shearl, the county liaison to the board, said, "There’s a group of people in Highlands that absolutely despises me, including some of the very ones that’s sitting here … go prove any commissioner that has ever done more for Highlands, North Carolina, than this Board of Commissioners and then we’ll talk about that. That’s absolutely garbage."
He said at-large voting is the best way to move forward and voting in-district cannot be justified.
“We represent every man, woman and child in this county. We deal with one pot of money and we divide that up as the best we can for every township,” he said.
Shearl also said voting precincts are obsolete and just cost the county money when residents could travel farther to vote at another location. He said the county will likely need to revisit redistricting again after the 2030 census to more fairly distribute the population according to updated numbers.
Marty Kimsey moved to go ahead and commit to at-large voting. He said under this system each commissioner has to be responsive to all citizens rather than just one section. The board unanimously approved the motion.
Kimsey also said district voting places a burden on election workers during early voting because voting locations have to have separate ballots for all precincts based on which commissioner is running there. Patterson noted election workers print off ballots for voters when they come in and so the county already has the capability to produce separate ballots for different voters. Kimsey insisted district voting would create a burden.
Allen said he was working on getting some information from the state on what different distributions of precincts and different district layouts would look like. He said with that information the board could go ahead and make a recommendation for district structure and give the discussion back to the Board of Commissioners.
The board will seek further input from residents at its next meeting on July 2, at 5 p.m. at the Human Services building on Lakeside Drive.