The Summit County Elections board voted today to trim the number of voting precincts in the county from 475 to 298. The move will help the cash strapped board to reduce its costs. Deputy Elections Director Kim Zurz tells AkronNewsNow the elections board will now have to make sure voters know all about the change.

" We certainly are hoping to be able to have the voters be as informed as possible prior to the election. We'll send voters out to all the voters so that they'll know exactly where they're going to vote, what their new precinct is, and giving them all that information ahead of time."

As for how much the new precinct map will save the elections board Zurz says " I don't know that we have an exact number yet to be honest because until we have figured out exactly how many polling locations, that obviously is going to make a difference as well. I don't anticipate our poll locations to drop nearly as much as the reduction has been in the number of precincts because we had already done a very significant polling location reduction a few years back. So we won't have as many locations changing as we did precincts."

There will be a corresponding reduction in the number of precinct committee workers.

Kim Zurz says the Board of Elections will also be ready to field questions from voters that are sure to come even with Board's upcoming effort to educate voters about the changes. " If they have questions they should contact the Board, and we will be able to help them by telling them what their new precinct location and their ward precinct might be."