Thousands of voters in Madison County will cast their ballots at new polling places in 2024 as officials add precincts to keep up with rapid population growth.

The county sent notices of changes to precinct and polling location or district lines to 60,000 registered voters in recent weeks.

“We are having explosive growth in this part of the world,” said Madison County Probate Judge Frank Barger.

“So there have been changes to polling locations or precinct lines and polling locations county-wide,” he said. “But the creation of new precincts, for the most part, have been concentrated on the west side of the county, where a lot of our development is happening.”

Madison County added five new precincts for 2024, bringing the total number of voting locations to 79.

Huntsville, now the most-populous city in Alabama, added two new polling places, bringing the city’s total precincts to 42.

Madison gained three precincts, increasing from nine to 12.

On the south side, Owens Cross Roads now has four precincts, an increase of one.

Harvest lost a precinct, leaving the community with two voting locations.

In other parts of the county, polling locations remain unchanged.

Barger, the probate judge, said the changes follow the 2020 census. Madison County, now the third most-populous in the state, added 68,000 residents since the previous census in 2010, pushing the population past 400,000.

Barger said about 60,000 of the county’s 319,000 registered voters are affected by the changes. Each voter should have received a notification card in the mail with information about where to vote and which elections to participate in.

“All 60,000 of those folks have received mailed notification specific to them, with their name, with their changes outlined, at their residential address.”

It’s not clear what portion of the 60,000 people are affected only by changes in polling locations, as some may also be affected by the redrawing of district lines or by both.

“A lot of people are going to be under the impression that we are involved in reapportionment and that we are involved in determining who represents what and we are not in any way,” Barger said. “We simply implement what (the legislature) put in place.”

Voters can check the Madison County election website or the Alabama Secretary of State’s website to verify their registration and polling place information.