MOUNT VERNON — A year of unfunded directives from higher up the governmental ladder sent representatives of the Knox County Board of Elections to the county commissioners Thursday to request additional funding. Board Chairman J. William Moody and Director Rita A. Yarman said that thanks to over one hundred directives from Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner this year, expenses for the 2008 fall general election are coming in higher than projected in the county budget established by the commissioners in January. The directives from the state regard requirements for equipment, personnel, materials and tech support which local boards of election must provide for elections.
“I’ve been disappointed with the last two secretaries of state giving counties directives without funding,” Commissioner Allen Stockberger said.
Moody said that the two main areas of concentration in preparing for the pending election have been the expansion of absentee voting, and providing both new and more voting machines. These efforts are designed to both meet new state and federal requirements and to avoid the voting logjam which occurred in Gambier during the 2004 election, when a late-season influx of newly registered student voters at Kenyon College collided with the presence of only two voting machines, one of which failed, forcing voting to be extended past 3 the following morning.
This election, Yarman said, Gambier is fortified with eight voting machines, with another two for College Township accessible nearby. All the machines are new and meet the current certifications for voting machines. To additionally ensure voting goes smoothly, student organizations at Kenyon College have been busing students to Mount Vernon to take advantage of the expanded no-fault absentee voting privileges established for this election.
Yarman said that the students were boosting what was already a record number of early voters. As of Thursday at noon, over 10,000 absentee ballots had been cast in Knox County, over one-quarter of the registered voters in the county. Yarman said that the Board of Elections fully expects to see 12,000 absentee votes cast by the end of the day Monday. Yarman said that this will more than double the number of absentee ballots cast in the 2004 presidential race.
A total budget shortfall of at least $88,600 was projected by the Board of Elections. Almost half of this figure comes from personnel that now must be classified in a different category. Over $20,000 fell under the category of contracts, referring to contracted technical support which must be on hand to ensure that the voting machines run properly. Yarman noted that this figure is likely to come down some, but that she was required by the higher authorities to reserve tech support for a 12-day period, in the eventuality that an audit or a recount might occur.
Other required but unfunded expenses include $6,000 for standby paper ballots, one of the more controversial points Brunner has insisted upon in her directives to state boards, and computerized audio files that read out the ballot for vision-impaired. Though such expenses may ultimately result in a substantial amount of waste, Moody pointed out that the expenses were cheaper than the lawsuits which would follow if such measure weren’t in place.
The commissioners said that they would review the request and decide promptly, as the Board of Elections’ payroll would be affected as early as the first week of November.