Want to know more about legislative reapportionment and how it affects Jericho ?

The Jericho BCA strongly recommends that the current Jericho - Underhill district remain as two towns with two representatives.

We strongly support the current two town/two representative model to the House of Representatives. Underhill and Jericho together elect two representatives and have done so for decades. There has been a long standing tradition which has been continuously honored by the major parties that one representative comes from Underhill and one from Jericho but that they both represent both towns. This has been beneficial to the citizens of both towns because they have had two officials to turn to when they felt a need to converse with their representative. Underhill and Jericho currently share many municipal and community resources, some of which are schools, the Deborah Rawson Memorial Library, the Underhill-Jericho Fire Department, the Underhill Jericho Park District, the Jericho Market, etc. We would advocate that Underhill and Jericho continue to have a two member representative district and that no changes to this status quo be effected.

We feel it is important to keep the flexibility of having two member districts to respect the differences across the state. In respect to Town Government and management of elections it is very important to respect Town lines. By keeping Jericho intact in a 2 member representative district the running of elections is more efficient. If Jericho were divided into 2 different single member districts that would require increased staffing at a shared polling location for Jericho’s two districts. There would be two different ballots and increased associated costs in printing the ballots, coding the vote tabulators and two different vote tabulators. There is a potential for increased confusion to the Jericho resident if they move between districts and decreased awareness as to what district that they live in. This will increase confusion with same day voter registration as well as the complexity of keeping two different districts separate while processing early/absentee ballots. This confusion may not only be on the voters part but the trained election official. With the trend of increasing mail in ballots, there will be extra steps needed to ensure that voters receive the correct ballot for their district. For voters that live in the section of Jericho that is split off, they will be voting in a separate district for August and November elections but join the rest of the Jericho voters during March elections and other special town elections.