Recent election cost $9 per vote; may result in polling changes on The Murfreesboro Post

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Recent election cost $9 per vote; may result in polling changes

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By: MICHELLE WILLARD, Post Staff Writer

Posted: Sunday, September 21, 2008 7:38 am

Due to the high cost of holding an election, the Rutherford County Election Commission may consider scaling back early voting in future elections, an election official said.

“The election commission is considering not doing early voting for historically low turnout elections,” said Hooper Penuel, Rutherford County Elections administrator.

The Aug. 7 county general election and state primary ended up costing the county more than $84,000 or $9 per vote.

Voter turnout was extraordinarily low in August with only 11,558 or 8.7 percent of more than 130,000 registered voters casting ballots. Penuel said August elections are historically slow with only 11 percent voting in 2000 and 12.32 percent in 2004, but none were as low as 8 percent.

“As far as presidential elections, it’s a different story,” Penuel said. In 2000 66 percent of voters cast ballots with 32 percent of those voting early. The 2004 presidential election saw similar numbers with almost 60 percent of voters turning out and 42 percent of them voting early.

Penuel said six locations will be open for the November election – one in Smyrna, one in La Vergne and four in Murfreesboro – which runs Oct. 15-30 before the Nov. 4 general election.

“I think early voting is doing a good job in November and gives us the opportunity to concentrate on Election Day,” Penuel said, meaning early voting will continue during high-turnout elections.

But as for other elections, the cost-benefit ratio may be too high for the county to continue staffing multiple early voting locations in the future.

“For (future) early voting we may have to combine some sites to save money,” Penuel said.

Penuel said most of the cost comes from staffing polling locations. During both early voting and Election Day in August, the election commission used between 325-350 poll workers and expects to use around 400 in November.

The cost issue will be compounded in 2010, when every county is required to switch to optical-scan voting machines that require paper ballots.

Optical-scan ballots are similar to the bubble sheets used in standardized tests, and the county is required to purchase the paper ballots.

“There will be so many different ballot styles for early voting we don’t have a site big enough to store them all,” Penuel said, adding the election commission may downsize to one central early voting location big enough to hold all the different ballots.

Currently, the county uses touch-screen voting machines, which the county owns, that use no paper but leave no paper trail. With the new machines, provided by the state, the county will have to pay more for the paper ballots.

Penuel said the public and county government will be surprised at just how much the paper ballots will cost.

Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.

Tagged under ELECTION

Member Opinions:

By: koln on 9/21/08
Reduce the number of elections through consolidation. A maximum of two elections per year in the spring and fall would allow for a party primary, when necessary, followed by a general election. All other issues could be put on the ballot on one of those dates.

By: Wil2hike on 9/22/08
I know I should know this - but, do the parties pay the costs associated with their primaries?