The formula that Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert adopted for divvying up state election support for the voucher vote means Wasatch County will get more than three times what it spent on the June 2006 election.

"I was a little surprised by that, but happy," said Titcomb, a Republican.

Swensen is less happy. The state's formula leaves Salt Lake County $203,900 short of what it spent running the June vote.

"The bottom line is Salt Lake County ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars less than needed to do the election," said Swensen, a Democrat. "While I can understand [wanting to ensure] the smaller counties don't take a hit, it's coming at the cost of Salt Lake County."

Add in the planned Feb. 5 Western Presidential Primary, which is budgeted with the same state cost-sharing formula, and Salt Lake County could have to find a way to plug a $407,800 hole in its election budget.

"It's a double whammy for us," said Swensen, who is trying to work with Herbert's office to address the issue. If that fails, she could have to go to the Salt Lake County Council for more money.

Herbert's elections counsel, Michael Cragun, said the formula to estimate how much the election would cost was built mainly around the number of voters in each county - about $1.72 for each voter who cast a ballot in last June's primary. That means that Salt Lake and Weber counties, which spend a lot per voter - $2.48 and $2.02 per voter respectively - took a hit. Counties such as Wasatch, which spent less than 52 cents per voter last June, came out ahead.

Another $100,000 was divided to help counties with sparse, scattered populations or a huge geographical area. San Juan County, which has both, got an extra $9,000.

Salt Lake County also received $20,000 to help meet a mandate by the Legislature that the county offer a dozen early voting sites - one in each Senate district in the county - for 10 days leading up to the November vote. It is the only county with that mandate.

"When we're handing out money we have to have a fair way to do it," Cragun said.

The amount the state will actually end up paying to the counties for the November election is about $1 million because cities that already had municipal elections scheduled in November are expected to pay the county what that city election would have cost - about $1.5 million.

In Weber County's case, the amount the cities would turn over to the county exceeds the cost of the election projected by Herbert's office, meaning Weber would get nothing from the state.

"We're doing the very best we can so the taxpayers here in Weber County aren't going to have to come up on the short end of this," said Weber County Clerk Alan McEwan, a Republican. "From what [the Lieutenant Governor's Office] told me, everything is not cast in stone."