Category: Costs

Democracy Too Costly for Seymour?

Primaries would run the office an estimated $15,000 each. While primaries are likely to occur, no one’s certain at this point. “I don’t know what I’m going to do in August and that is the key,” said Ron Skurat, the Democratic Registar of Voters… Skurat did the math on the salaries and came up with roughly $6.81 per hour for the work he and Pelletier put in.

Valley Independent Sentinel:  More Voting, More Money <read>

Democracy. We love it, but man, that stuff’s expensive.

With both Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Sen. Christopher Dodd stepping down, voting registrars in town expect to hold primaries for both major political parties this year.

That means more money in the budget that hasn’t much to begin with.

Primaries would run the office an estimated $15,000 each. While primaries are likely to occur, no one’s certain at this point.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do in August and that is the key,” said Ron Skurat, the Democratic Registar of Voters.

Skurat made his statement during a review of the registrars’ proposed 2010-2011 budget in front of the town’s Board of Finance Monday.

The registrars’ budget proposal climbs to $86,100 — up $20,200 from its current spending plan.

The majority of increases are to salaries and stipends…

Just because it is in here it doesn’t mean you get the raise,” said Paecht to Skurat and Republican Registrar Judy Pelletier.

Skurat did the math on the salaries and came up with roughly $6.81 per hour for the work he and Pelletier put in.

Their assistant, a part-time position described by Skurat as invaluable, makes the equivalent of less than $8 an hour.

Poll workers earn $8.50 per hour plus two meals.

State mandates drive most of the department’s costs. For example there is a necessity for two phone lines at each polling place. One is used for the regular machines and one is used exclusively for a machine designed for voters with disabilities.

“We’ve used it once in the last five years but it is a state law,” Skurat said.

The cost of keeping the phone lines active and available at three polling locations adds up, with all but $10 of the operating budget’s line item already expended.

Communications and telephones were cut from $3,000 in the 2008-2009 budget to $2,000 in the operating budget…

We point out that it is not all Chris Dodd and Jodi Rell’s fault.  The odds for a Democratic Primary for Governor were pretty high before Gov. Rell stepped down.  Before Sen. Dodd stepped down there was also a large possibility for a Republican Primary for the U.S. Senate.  In addition to the usual primary in Presidential years, we recall a statewide primary four years ago between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont.  As the article notes, the budget in Seymour also involves democracy and elections:

The budget proposal notes that the department returned money to the treasury during the past two fiscal years due to an “abnormally small number of elections.”

With the likelihood of primaries this time around, the registrar’s said this is a much tougher budget. They said at least one of the elections will be the referendum to pass the budget.

West Hartford: Mayor Supports Audits – Would Like State To Pay

“The audit is being done for the best of reasons to protect..to make sure democracy is being done accurately.”

Local Online News Video report on West Hartford post-election audit counting <video>

Featured in the video is West Hartford Mayor, Scott Slifka.

The audit is being done for the best of reasons to protect..to make sure democracy is being done accurately.

Like CTVotersCount, the Mayor believes that the State should pay for the audits:

Disappointing that we have been asked to pay for it.  We have requested of the Secretary of the State that here office pay for it.

We believe that the 10% of districts chosen to be counted are checking the system for the whole State, not just their local community. The audits are a small investment to pay to provide confidence and deterrence to the voters that our system is protected from errors and fraud.  The audits cost about 10% of the cost of the paper ballots printed for each election.  Last year’s Presidential post-election audit cost about $72,000 state wide.  West Hartford audited three districts out of the sixty chosen statewide for $2,300.

Of course, even thought the Secretary of the State supports the audits, they are mandiated by the legislature.

Update: Looking at West Hartford’s 2010 budget, the entire budget for the Registrar of Voters is $259,662 and for the town, 212,571,688.

Registrars Say, Optical Scanners Provide Opportunity for Savings

Not only does the new optical scanning voting equipment make a trip to the polling place faster, it will also help the registrars of voters save money as the town moves from eight polling places to six in November.

Glastonbury, CT will save by consolidating polling places <read>

Not only does the new optical scanning voting equipment make a trip to the polling place faster, it will also help the registrars of voters save money as the town moves from eight polling places to six in November.

The town council recently approved the plan by Democratic Registrar Zelda Lessne and Republican Registrar Mary Foley and will remove Glastonbury High School and Eastbury Elementary School as polling places. The changes mean that polling places are changing for voters in districts 2, 6 and 8…

Lessne said the move will reduce election costs by approximately 25 percent and affect about 3,600 households, or 6,000 voters. Based on an average turnout for a municipal election, that’s 1,260 households or 2,100 voters, approximately 10 percent of the total number of registered voters in town. The town spends about $25,000 on each election.

“It makes a lot of sense, especially in these tough economic times,” Lessne said Monday. “We can hire less people, moving expenses are cheaper, we don’t have to feed as many people. There’s savings all the way down the line. In this economy we need to pinch every penny we can.”

As a Glastonbury resident, this change makes sense to me.  Unlike some large population cities where many voters can walk to the polling place, Glastonbury covers a very large area, the vast majority of voters must drive to their polling place, just as most students ride to school on a bus.

Hartford: Wasting $ As Usual

Story from Jeffery B. Cohen at the Courant:

.”Working Families Party registrar Urania Petit called Cityline this morning to complain. Her Democratic colleague, Olga Iris Vazquez, hired a six-week, $13-an-hour, temporary employee two weeks ago to help with the September primary.”

Story from Jeffery B. Cohen at the Courant: <read>

Working Families Party registrar Urania Petit called Cityline this morning to complain. Her Democratic colleague, Olga Iris Vazquez, hired a six-week, $13-an-hour, temporary employee two weeks ago to help with the September primary.

But turns out there’s no need for a primary. And the employee is still working for another four or so weeks.

Some of  the comments said the third party registrar was wasting money, another defended her.

As we have said previously, if Hartford acted responsibly, having a third registrar is no reason that costs have to go up at all. <read>

For a city the size of Hartford there should be no problem having three registrars and the costs should be minimal. Each city sets the budget, salary, hours, benefits, and staffing of their Registrars Of Voters Office. Hartford could simply cut staffing and perhaps cut registrars’ hours or salary when three are elected to do the job of two.

Video: The Costs of Op-scan vs. DRE’s

In Tennessee they are fighting for optical scan in the Legislature.  Election officials claim that the costs of  paper ballots, audits, and optical scanners is too much.  We hear similar complaints about the costs of paper ballots and audits in Connecticut as well.

We recommend watching the video of a legislator as he explains reality vs. the estimates of election officials:  <watch>

Diebold: Revenue way down. $25,000,000 settlement proposed

Results included a $25 million charge for a deal Diebold reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle civil charges related to a pending enforcement inquiry. The proposed settlement still needs final SEC approval.

The New York Times reports the story <read>

Results included a $25 million charge for a deal Diebold reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle civil charges related to a pending enforcement inquiry. The proposed settlement still needs final SEC approval.

Diebold spun off its election system business after a failed attempt to sell it.  The settlement is related to accounting tricks presumably intended to puff up voting system results to produce a sale.

It Pays To Complain – Election Officials Complain, Diebold Makes Public Pay

Humboldt County, CA found problems with the Dieblod GEMS system which it intended to replace, while it intended to continue to use its Diebold voter registration system.  Now it is left with 90 days to find another solution as Dieblod executes its option to terminate its support of the county.   Hard to interpret this as anyting but retribution and intimidation of the other juristictions, Brad Blog has the story <read>

As if you complained to GM that your fully paid for Humvee was a lemon and they said they would reposses it and your GTO next week.

It is interesting that the letter concerning the voter registration system, known as DIMS — in which no problems were either discovered or reported — is dated March 17, the day before the GEMS letter. The county’s DIMS voter registration database system is entirely separate from the GEMS vote counting system, and the county had hoped to continue using it. In fact, the county IT department was in the middle of performing a software upgrade to the DIMS system when the letters were received…

Back on April 6, Premier’s unfortunately-named spokesman Chris Riggall commented on the contract terminations to the Times-Standard: “We just believed it prudent to kind of make a, well, to essentially provide a clean break, or a fresh start, for however the county would like to proceed going forward. We thought it would provide the county an opportunity to make a fresh start.”

Another cautionary tale of they type of company we trust with our democracy and the dangers of dependence on vendors who supply proprietary technology.

What Did The November 2008 Post-Election Audit Cost?

How much did our November audit cost? Election officials and towns complain about the cost of the audits and that they threaten town budgets.

No matter what your politics, you can find many many votes in Hartford, Washington, or your town that you disagree with, costing one way or another more than the cost of an audit. What is the value of confidence that all those officials were elected without error or fraud?

After the November 2008 election, Secretary Bysiewicz ordered the post-election audit of all five races in the election which added about 40% to the votes required to be counted by law.  We appreciate this as the law only called for the audit of a randomly selected three races and does not exempt uncontested races.  As we pointed out at the time, using statistical methods we could have done much better auditing all races and the two questions counting the original number of votes <read>

But how much did our November audit cost?  Election officials and towns complain about the cost of the audits and that they threaten town budgets.

We have two sets of information provided very responsively  from the Secretary of the State’s office.  The reimbursement requests from towns from the November 2008 election as of February 12 <read> and for the November 2007 election as of yesterday. <read>

We analyzed the November 2008 data, comparing the costs for the towns with the number of ballots and votes counted <read>

Preliminary conclusions.

Some towns don’t actually seem all that concerned with the costs:

  • In November 2008 47 towns requested reimbursement from the State 9 selected for the audit did not (we use 46 for our calculations as we were not able to classify one town)
  • In November 2007 13 towns requested reimbursement  27 did not.

The costs of auditing vary widely between in November 2008  towns:

  • Cost per ballot counted range from $0.09 to $1.88
  • Cost per vote counted range from $0.02 to $0.38|We have a hard time believing the lower costs reported and the higher costs.

Costs on average and in total for Municipalities:

  • The most reasonable number to use for November is the median cost of $0.48 per ballot
  • If all towns had requested reimbursement at the median cost per ballot, the total cost of the audit in November 2008 would have been: $72,103
  • Since we audit 10% of the districts we audit approximat3ely 10% of the ballots cast so the cost per voter is 1/10th of the cost per ballot actually counted, or about $0.05 per voter.

Total costs of the Audit:

The estimate of $72,103 does not include all the costs to the State for the audit, just the Municipalities.  Some of the additional costs, primarily for the Secretary of the State’s Office are:

What would we do for an audit? And how much would that cost?

CTVotersCount proposed a revision to the audit law in this session of the General Assembly, it was died in committee. <read>.  It would audit ALL statewide and congressional races and ALL questions on the ballot based on statistical principles and eliminate several loopholes in the law.

  • It would audit only three races per district except under exceptional circumstances, consistent with the current law, or 40% less than the November 2008 audit, or $72,103 * .6 = $43,262
  • Eliminating the loopholes would add less than 10%, or $43,262 * 1.1 = $47, 588 or about $0.03 per vote.

But, based on our observations the current methods of counting provide insufficient transparency, accuracy, and confidence.  So we would adjust these costs:

  • Most towns use two person counting teams, we would use three or four person teams so the cost of a single count might as much as double.
  • Counting more accurately would reduce the need for counting multiple times and the costs for unnecessary investigations.
  • Costs might go up anywhere from 25% to 90%
  • As an estimate we would increase costs to the municipalities by 50%,  or about:

So it might be about $72,000 or $0.045 per vote for a sufficient audit. To put that in context:

  • Cost of paper ballot $0.35 per voter
  • Stamp for letter to your representative requesting single payer heath care, $0.42
  • One teabag and a postage stamp $0.60
  • Cost of a standalone race to replace a Senate vacancy $6,000,000 not including audit costs or campaign costs.
  • Cost of clean elections for a single State Senate candidate in on district, $85,000.
  • Cost of just one highly contested Senate race, tens of millions,
  • Cost of a wrong vote in congress, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives.

No matter what your politics, y0u can find many many votes in Hartford, Washington, or your town that you disagree with, costing one way or another more than the cost of an audit.  What is the value of confidence that all those officials were elected without error or fraud?  We say priceless, certainly worth  much much more than $72,000 for last November’s election.

Is it worth $0.05 per voter or $0.03 per voter for integrity and confidence?  We think so.

Sparks Fly Over Threat To Cut Registrars’ Hours In Half

In the proposed 2009-10 operating budget, Karen Doyle Lyons and Stuart Wells, the Republican and Democratic registrars of voters, respectively, are facing having their pay cut from $46,800 to $23,800.

The Stamford Advocate has the story <read>

The city’s registrars of voters, in a pitch to the city’s Board of Estimate and Taxation on Monday evening, made a plea that their full-time jobs escape the budget axe.

In the proposed 2009-10 operating budget, Karen Doyle Lyons and Stuart Wells, the Republican and Democratic registrars of voters, respectively, are facing having their pay cut from $46,800 to $23,800.

Both argued there is more than enough work in the registrars’ office.

“We simply need three full-time people to do this stuff,” Wells said while outlining the registrars’ office year-round workload, including elections…

“I urge caution in precipitous staffing changes that may render it very difficult for Norwalk to meet its obligations under Connecticut law and expose you to greater costs in the event of non-compliance of fines,” Deputy Secretary of the State Lesley D. Mara wrote…

An irritated Mayor Richard Moccia responded the letter was “an implied threat” and criticized Mara for involving herself in the city’s budget process after he learned from Doyle Lyons and Wells that the state’s election-related technology will occasionally break down.

We are on the side of the registrars and agree with Deputy Mara.   Their salary is hardly excessive at $46,800 for full time, while a total of three full time registrars and deputies seems reasonable for a town of Norwalk’s size, with about 37,000 votes for President in November.

If we want to talk excessive, look at Hartford!  Hartford had about 34,000 voters for President in November and  now has three full time registrars at $80,000 each.  Just two at $80,000 is excessive especially considering that each registrar (including the third) has a full time deputy.

(As we have pointed out before, we are pleased that Hartford has a third registrar and dissapointed that Hartford cannot right-size the hours and staff in the Registrars’ Office to fit the job)

FAQ: When Do We Worry About Money?

We have recently noticed a natural human tendency: When we are in favor of something, we ignore the costs, no matter how great. When we are against something, we highlight the costs, no matter how small. This is clearly illustrated by two Hartford Courant editorials, one day apart. Monday Dec 22nd: Rell Sharpens The Knife … Continue reading “FAQ: When Do We Worry About Money?”

We have recently noticed a natural human tendency: When we are in favor of something, we ignore the costs, no matter how great. When we are against something, we highlight the costs, no matter how small.

This is clearly illustrated by two Hartford Courant editorials, one day apart.

Monday Dec 22nd: Rell Sharpens The Knife <read>

Last week, Gov. M. Jodi Rell proposed her second “deficit mitigation plan” designed to erase the remaining $356 million gap between revenue and expenses in this fiscal year’s state budget. Again, as the first time, she gets rid of the shortfall without layoffs, new taxes or raiding the rainy day fund, a cash reserve account with $1.4 billion in it…

But at $10,000-plus a day, a special session is an expense the state can do without.

Here we are talking millions and billions in decisions. The Courant on this same day ran a front page story of the financial difficulties facing towns such as Simsbury. But the Courant’s problem is $10,000 a day to have our Legislature work on this problem. If we ran government like a business then we would gladly spend $10,000 a day to deal with million and billion dollar issues…that seems to be exactly what the Governor is proposing. Then again we could run Government like a newspaper…

(Note: We really don’t know if having a special session is a good idea or not. However, $10,000 a day for a few days work on the part of the Legislature is negligible if such a session would help deal better with the economic situation)

Sunday Dec 21st: Let Voters Decide <read>

In Connecticut as in many other states, the governor has the sole power to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy until the next scheduled election. Two Democratic officials — Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and state Rep. James Spallone — want to change the law to require vacancies to be filled by special election.

They’re right. It makes more sense to let voters decide who replaces a senator unable to finish his or her term than that constituency of one, the governor…

Changing the law to provide for a special election in the event of a midterm Senate vacancy makes the most sense.

Nary a word in the article about costs, just benefits. What is the difference between a Special Session that costs $10,000 a day for a couple of days vs. a Special Election that costs several million? We can think of several:

  • $10,000 a day is reasonable for dealing with multi-million dollar issues.
    Millions for a Special Election is reasonable for dealing with multi-billion dollar issues.
  • The costs and benefits of the Special Session will be born by all State Taxpayers.
  • The cost of the Special Election will primarily fall on Towns.
  • The direct financial beneficiaries of the Special Election would be the media. Considering campaign expenditures, we can expect those benefits could run in the neighborhood of $10,000,000 to $20,000,000.

(Note: We favor Special Elections for Senate vacancies. However, in considering all proposals we should consider all the costs and benefits. Considering the billion dollar decisions Senators its worth it to let the people decide).

Once again, its a natural human tendency:

  • When we are in favor of something, we ignore the costs, no matter how great.
  • When we are against something, we highlight the costs, no matter how small.

Update:  According to the Republican-American the estimate for a Special Election: <read>

Additionally, GOP lawmakers argued that a special election would be costly to towns and cities. The legislature’s budget office estimated a statewide election to fill a vacancy would cost $6 million.

Update: Towns bemoan cost of special Senate election <read>

Now that Massachusetts is about the exercise the law, Town Clerks are concerned.  We wonder if those same untimely concerns will surface in Connecticut the 1st time we need to exercise our new law?

The election to determine Sen. Edward Kennedy’s successor will cost cities and towns more than $5 million, and town clerks aren’t thrilled.

The upcoming special primary and election will cost individual communities thousands, an expense they hadn’t planned for.

Framingham, for instance, will spend more than $55,000 on the election and primary, with the state expected to reimburse the town about $13,000, or $6,500 for each event.

The Massachusetts Town Clerks Association has sent a letter to the secretary of state to expedite printing of absentee ballots, and there’s been discussion about having the state pay for the whole election.

Once again, we are in favor of the law and believe a Senate seat is worth a vote of the people and worth the small additional insurance of a post-election audit.

Update from MA:  Auditor: Costs for special Senate election are an unfunded mandate <read>

“The state law requiring this special election imposes a significant cost on cities and towns at a time when they can least afford it,” DeNucci said in a statement. “I request that my legal determination lead to full state funding of these costs.”

A 1980 state law requires that state laws imposing new costs on local governments must either be fully funded by the state, or subject to voluntary local acceptance. Local officials, struggling with local aid cuts and an erosion of revenues tied to the recession, are wondering how they will pay costs tied to the Dec. 8 primary and the Jan. 19 special election to fill the seat held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.

DeNucci says the $7.2 million estimate covers the cost of wages for election day workers and law enforcement personnel, with costs rising higher when other expenses are factored in, such as the costs of certifying nomination papers, setting up and breaking down polling places, printing voting lists, programming voting equipment and rental and interpreter expenses.