County votes to keep its polls open, despite cost

By Jeff Switzer   Everett Herald Writer    18 August 2005

EVERETT - Snohomish County voters will keep their right to go to the polls, despite a still-climbing estimated cost to do so.

The County Council reaffirmed its position Wednesday in a 3-2 vote while debating whether to spend about $2.2 million to keep polling places open.

The debate was forced by a change in state law that requires the county to buy paper audit machines for its electronic voting machines.

The alternative was to launch a system of all-mail elections countywide.

"I just don't think the general public is comfortable yet with all-mail ballots," said Councilman John Koster, who voted against changing to all-mail elections. "I think people should still have the right to go to the polls and cast their ballot."

Fellow Republican Councilmen Gary Nelson and Jeff Sax also voted to keep the current combined system of polls and absentee voting. Democrat Councilmen Dave Gossett and Kirke Sievers voted to go to an all-mail ballot.

The paper audit machines will cost $1 million, and ongoing costs of having both polling places and absentee ballots are now estimated to be about $1.2 million - a 131 percent increase, county staff said.

Those costs include storing the new machines in a large, centralized election work space and training workers to maintain the machines.

The county needs to buy 875 paper audit machines by Jan. 1, according to state law.

If the county instead closes the polls and switches to an all-mail ballot, only $34,500 would be required to buy 30 machines for use by disabled voters.

Future operating costs for an all-mail elections system are estimated at $457,000 a year, compared with $1.2 million for the combined system, County Council analyst Jim Del Ciello said.

Sixty-one percent of voters - 216,736 - cast absentee ballots, a figure forecast to rise to 70 percent by the end of 2006.

Sievers said voting by mail means higher voter participation, adding that the council split along party lines on the issue.

Nelson said voter fraud is highest with absentee ballots, and said King County's troubles in the gubernatorial election created doubt in voters' minds.

"Their confidence with respect to mail-in ballots has been diminished considerably," Nelson said.

Gossett countered that King County's problems weren't with how voters cast their ballots, but how the ballots were handled.

In July, Gossett sided with keeping polling places open, but said he switched his vote because of the increase in costs.

The trend statewide is to go to all-mail ballots, following a change in state law. Twenty-nine of the state's 39 counties now hold all-mail elections.

Gossett said the debate over whether to have an all-mail election system is over, but a public hearing is planned on the emergency spending of $1 million for the paper audit machines.