So it's not right that county taxpayers have to pay a portion of the cost of conducting these state-mandated special elections. The state should foot the entire bill. And in most cases it will.
Under the reimbursement formula devised by Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, which was based on the number of voters and weighted to benefit rural areas, the state will cover the entire cost for 27 of Utah's 29 counties. In fact, some will make a tidy profit.
But Salt Lake and Weber counties, which spend more than they will receive, are left wondering how to pay for it all.
The problem is most severe in Salt Lake County, which will receive $1.72 per registered voter, far less than its $2.48-per-voter cost. County Clerk Sherrie Swensen expects a shortfall of more than $200,000 from each election, leaving a $407,800 hole in the budget for taxpayers to fill.
Swensen said the formula unfairly penalizes urban counties, where costs are higher because the economy of scale does not apply to staging elections in metropolitan areas.
In a small county with a dozen machines and a handful of polling places, elections are largely inexpensive, in-house affairs. Training of election workers and testing of equipment can be done by staff, while machines can be delivered to precincts with a county truck.
It's not so easy in Salt Lake County, which has 3,000 voting machines, 491,000 registered voters and nearly 400 polling places for large elections, each staffed by a technician, a poll manager and three judges. Rent must be paid, and with just 30 full-time employees, the training of poll workers, as well as the transportation and testing of machines and other services, must be contracted out. Plus, Salt Lake is the only county required to offer early voting sites, an additional expense.
Even by consolidating precincts into 200 polling places for the November and February elections, Swensen says the county will be left with a $400,000 bill.
That amounts to a poll tax for Salt Lake County taxpayers, and that's not fair. The state should pay every penny of every county's cost to conduct state-mandated special elections. And not a penny more.
