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Farmington • Of Davis County's 15 cities, all but two — West Bountiful and West Point — intend to contract with the county to conduct this year's primary and general elections electronically.
County clerk/auditor Steve Rawlings, who helped pioneer the use of electronic voting machines in Utah in 2005, would prefer to make it a clean sweep.
"They're still wanting to do their own elections — I don't know why," Rawlings said. "If we could get those cities to join with us, it then reduces the costs of all 15 cities."
West Bountiful and West Point still use optical-scan paper ballots for two main reasons: familiarity and cost.
"The folks here really like the paper ballot system," said West Bountiful recorder/auditor Heidi Voordeckers. "We took an informal poll, and that's what people are comfortable with."
Voordeckers foresees her city of 5,265 residents switching some time in the future, but right now the cost of paper for West Bountiful is less — by about $4,000 for the primary and general elections combined, where the electronic process would cost almost twice as much.
In West Point, a city of 9,511, dollars dictated its decision.
"It's less expensive to go the traditional route," said City Manager Gary Hill, "and like most, we're counting pennies these days."
Hill estimated his city's paper-ballot cost at $3,500 per election, with electronic voting running $6,000 to $7,000.
"We're certainly open to making that switch," Hill added. "The decision is purely financial at this point."
However, if all 15 cities contracted with the county for electronic voting, everyone's costs would come down, Rawlings said.
While equipment costs are fixed, other expenses can be shared, such as training poll workers and programming machines, said Terry Tremea, the county's chief deputy over administration.
"We're getting close to what it costs to do it manually," Rawlings added. "So we say give the public the chance to use the new equipment."
In 2005, Davis County was the first of Utah's 29 counties to use the new electronic voting machines in accordance with the federal Help America Vote Act. Six years later, Rawlings is convinced that digital beats paper and it's time to complete the transition.
"It will make the process more transparent," Rawlings said, "by allowing the public to have online results as soon as the votes are tabulated by computer."
The period to file for municipal offices opens July 1 and closes July 15. After that, cities will finalize their election contracts with the county, Tremea said, since they will know whether primaries are needed to narrow their fields of candidates.
Twitter: @catmck —
Davis County elections
The city recorder oversees elections in each of its 15 municipalities. Those cities have the option to contract with the county to use its electronic voting system and staff, according to County Clerk and Auditor Steve Rawlings.