Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh wants to keep all 143 of the District’s voting precincts open for the special election to elect an at-large council member scheduled for April, and she’s asked the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics to dig deep on cost-saving opportunities. Like the rest of city government, the elections board is under pressure to find way to cut costs as the District scrambles to reduce spending in the face of declining revenue. Earlier this month, the board of elections raised the possibility of opening just 16 voting centers as a way of saving about $200,000 for the special election to fill the seat vacated by Kwame Brown when he was sworn in as council chairman. Residents could cast ballots at any of the 16 centers regardless of where they live, and some studies have shown that voter participation goes up as a result.
On Wednesday, Cheh, who oversees the board of elections, held a hearing on the proposal. She endorsed keeping the 143 precincts open, which is also the first choice of the BOEE.
“There’s probably a little bit more money to save if we put our minds to it,” Cheh told board of elections Executive Director Rokey Suleman during the hearing.
He said the board had already slashed 30 percent of the typical special election budget to bring the price tag down to $829,000. The council has budgeted $590,000 for the election.
Among the cost-saving measures already taken, Suleman said, was reducing the number of paper ballots to anticipate a 40 percent turnout. Special elections in the city typically turn out between 7 and 13 percent of voters. But because there’s no way to predict an influx of voters at any one precinct, “we have to supply at the high end and accept that waste,” Suleman said. Voting, he said, won’t be disrupted if ballots run low because voters can use touch screen voting machines and the city can print ballots.
Suleman told Cheh he will go through the budget again, but he’s not sure he’ll find more savings or opportunities to move cash from other agency expenditures.
“Our budget has been decimated,” he said.
