NATCHEZ — All registered voters in the City of Natchez soon will receive new voter cards before the upcoming election.

City Clerk Donnie Holloway released an official notice Wednesday saying that due to the city’s redistricting which was approved in November, changes have been made to the ward locations and voting places of many Natchez residents.

“They’ve got to know where they’re going to vote,” Holloway said. “We want people to notice it and be aware of where they’re going to vote.”

Holloway recommends voters destroy and throw away their old voter cards when they receive their new ones, in order to cut down on confusion.

Adams County Election Commissioner Larry Gardner said several thousand cards have already been sent out, and he hopes to finish the rest of the approximately 10,000 cards this week.

Gardner said each registered Natchez voter would receive a card, though only approximately 30 percent will see a change in their voting locations.

“There’s no way to pick each individual house and decide who’s going to get a card and who’s not,” Gardner said. “You have to send the card to the whole street.”

Because of this, even some voters in the county may receive a new card, he said.

The redistricting has been a complicated process, Gardner said, because the cards must include the senate, house, aldermanic and court districts, and the lines for those divisions are all different.

An additional complication, Gardner said, has been some clerical errors in the reports provided to them by Slaughter and Associates, the firm that completed the city’s redistricting.

“I guarantee you I probably made some mistakes, too,” Gardner said. “My grandfather said, ‘If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not doing anything.’”

Because of these complications, some cards may need to be corrected after they are sent out. Gardner said he trained his team well, but some of the commissioners lack experience in redistricting situations.

Gardner said he is trying to finish all the cards this week, but would prefer to do the work correctly than merely to do it quickly.

“I don’t want to do this election over again. We want to do it right the first time,” Gardner said. “When you’re moving ten-thousand people around, that’s not an easy task.”

The city’s primaries will be held May 10 with a runoff, if needed, on May 24. The general election will be June 7.