Election costs could hit $3 million in Cuyahoga
Counties paid more for postage, overtime
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Mark Naymik
Cleveland Plain Dealer

For Cuyahoga County voters, the price of democracy is about $3 million.

That's how much election officials expect the Nov. 2 election will cost when they are done tallying the cost of postage, overtime, temporary workers, printing, extra voting machines and other items. 
 The county elections board set aside about $1.8 million in its 2004 budget for the election, a figure based on the cost of previous presidential-year elections.

But the flood of new registrations and requests for absentee ballots drove up the costs and forced the board to seek an additional $1.5 million from the county commissioners, who approved the request in October.

Michael Vu, the elections board director, hopes to return about $500,000 in unspent money to the county, putting the final cost of the election between $2.8 million and $3 million.

The figure will include the cost of a presidential recount, which will take place next week.

Some of the biggest extra costs came from processing a flood of registration cards and requests for absentee ballots, which drove up personnel and postage expenses.

The board received 360,000 registration cards nearly four times as many as in the 2000 election and 95,000 absentee ballot requests, also a big jump from four years ago.

The board paid its employees $378,000 for overtime while shelling out $550,000 more to pay temporary workers, records show.

For several weeks, board employees and temporary workers typed registration information into computers nearly around the clock to process a constant backlog of cards that grew to about 20,000 at one point.

The board didn't budget money for employee overtime. It had planned instead to give its workers time off for the extra hours. But the workload never let up, forcing the board to keep employees working.

Postage costs were also among the biggest unanticipated costs, totaling about $445,000. The board was required to mail a confirmation to every person who filled out a registration card and send absentee ballots to people who requested them.

Also, the board mailed everyone on its registration list about 1 million people a guide to voting. Though the guides were not required by state law, the board wanted to ensure that people voted at the proper polling locations and knew how to use punch cards.

The board also spent $50,000 on extra voting devices and booths and $55,000 to advertise the names of people who submitted registration cards with incomplete information, a move aimed at exhausting its attempts to reach people and ensure they could vote.

The Cuyahoga County elections board was not alone. Boards around the state spent more than they anticipated for overtime and postage, as they too were hit with a flood of new registrations and requests for absentee ballots, said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the secretary of state.

Citing the nearly 900,000 new registrations statewide, LoParo said, "That placed an enormous burden on the county boards of elections."

John Schmidt, deputy director of the Summit County Board of Elections, said his board is over budget by $675,000 for 2004. Schmidt said the board issued about 28,000 absentee ballots this year compared with about 18,000 four years ago.