STARKVILLE – As votes rolled in for the municipal Democratic primary election on April 1, city officials started seeing an inordinate amount of confusion for citizens looking for where they should go to cast their ballots.

But while there is always some confusion around finding polling places, during this election, the issue was exacerbated by more than 1,400 address errors in voter rolls.

Mayor Lynn Spruill told The Dispatch on Friday that it became evident there was a problem as the day went on as it was not just “one or two people” who came to the wrong location.

“It’s not a sporadic thing. It’s more widespread,” Spruill said. “And so when we had whole pieces of roads – we had an apartment complex, for example, that was left out (of voter rolls) – those kinds of things were the things that clued us in that there was a bigger problem.”

After the election, the city, the county and the Golden Triangle Planning and Development District started looking into the errors. City Clerk Lesa Hardin told the board of aldermen April 15 that this follow-up investigation discovered 1,480 errors in addresses used to create the primary voter rolls.

Toby Sanford, the geographic information system director for GTPDD, said the issue arose from idiosyncrasies in Starkville’s addresses – an issue that was exacerbated by redistricting in 2022.

Oktibbeha County hired GTPDD to physically check and reassign all its addresses according to 911 standards in 2009, but Sanford said the city opted out at that time. Following that system, each 1/1,000th of a mile is assigned a potential address, and Sanford said that project also ensured each side of county roads are numbered either even or odd, without switches.

However, the city opted out, Sanford said, retaining its original addresses – including some irregularities in even and odd numbers, or even numbering of whole blocks. Though Sanford could not remember the exact reason for that decision, he said it could have been based on a political disagreement between then-city and county administration.

Spruill, who served as the city’s chief administrative officer at the time, said the decision was based on “financial reasons.”

Sanford estimated that today it would take about $25,000 to bring the city to the same standard as the county’s addressing system.
Still, it is ultimately the county’s legal responsibility to fix addressing issues, Sanford said.

“Mississippi code … gives 911 addressing to the board of supervisors. They’re responsible for it. They’re the backbone,” Sanford said. “If something happens because of bad addressing, like an ambulance can’t find somebody and somebody dies, it is the board of supervisors that is responsible, and it doesn’t matter where it happens, county or city.”

An incomplete solution

Sanford said he approached E911 director Kristen Campanella in 2018, saying something had to be done about mapping Starkville’s addresses. But the project was completed in conjunction with the city and was “not like most projects would be done,” Sanford said.

Rather than using Sanford’s typical method of driving down streets and physically mapping addresses, which would have been more expensive, the city instead opted to use data it previously collected for its utilities to create the map, Sanford said.

Using the utility data, Sanford said, meant addresses were mapped based on where their meters were located, not the houses themselves. GTPDD went in and “cleaned up” that map, Sanford said, though he said it may not have caught all of the errors at that time.

Around 2019, Sanford said, the city contracted with GTPDD to add new addresses to its maps whenever new streets are constructed, he said, though that contract did not include any verification of the addresses already mapped.

But in 2021, the city annexed 2.3 miles and about 1,400 residents. That annexation and imbalances in the city’s population found by the 2020 census triggered redistricting in 2022. Some of the new lines instituted at that time put half of a street in one ward and half of a street in another.

But that didn’t mean the address numbers followed those rules. With bad addressing at play, Sanford said, it was just a matter of waiting for one of two situations.

“There’s two things that make your bad addressing show up,” Sanford said. “One of them is emergency response … and one is voting.”

Addresses are inputted into voter rolls through the statewide election management system, Sanford said, which operates based on ranges, not individual numbers. But that system doesn’t account for areas like Curry Street, which has odd numbers on either side of the road in one area, and its 300 block and 500 block next to the 100 block.

Irregularly numbered homes or blocks may have technically switched wards during redistricting, but the address could have still been included with other similarly-numbered homes in the election management system, Sanford said. So when a voter showed up to their proper polling place, they may have found they were not on the rolls in that ward.

Fixing the problem

With 22 years of addressing experience under his belt, Sanford found the primary frustrating. He spent six days after the election going through the address ranges manually, fixing the biggest pain spots first before trying to get the rest of the map clean.

Sanford said he believes he fixed the majority of the errors on the map, which should translate to the statewide election management system and voter rolls by the June 3 election.

Oktibbeha County Circuit Clerk Tony Rook confirmed that when issues with voter addresses in the primary election were brought to his attention, his office coordinated with GTPDD and the city to receive and update the rolls with new information.

“We did identify some inaccuracies in our database, and the data was promptly corrected,” Rook said in a text message to The Dispatch. “Additionally, we have implemented measures to reduce the likelihood of similar issues occurring in the future. Election integrity is our highest priority, and our office is committed to working diligently to ensure it is upheld.”

Rook said his office sent out new voter cards to all affected voters once the rolls were updated.

But Sanford still plans to meet with Hardin after the general election to go over all of the issues he encountered during the primary, checking street by street. Even though he is not under contract to do that work, Sanford said it is important enough to elections and citizens’ safety that he plans to go ahead and get the addresses fixed and bill the city later.

“I love what we do, and it saves lives, and that’s what it’s about first and foremost,” Sanford said. “And I told them that day, as we were talking to the commissioners and going through the affidavits, ‘Personally, I’m worried about the ambulance and the ambulance finding these people, not this voting thing.’”

Former Dispatch reporter Cullen Paradis contributed to this report.

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