I received the following email from Mr. Lewis Staley and he gave me permission to reprint.
Mr. Miller,
My wife and I served on the recent School Board
Election September 11, 2007. Both of us have chaired many different elections
in many different precincts. We serve where we are needed and enjoy the
experience.
The recent election referenced above was very
disappointing in the turn out of voters as you are well aware at this point.
Hiawatha 1 where we worked had only 11 voters all day. Just based on the
expenses paid to the three precinct officials the cost per vote was
approximately thirty plus dollars. You can adjust this number up or down based
on the entire election expenses (your office expenses included.) I think you
would agree that this is ridiculous waste. Therefore I would ask that you give
thoughtful consideration to the suggestion below. Your first thought might be
that it is not the way the election laws allow but to that I would say that laws
can be changed and it has to start some place. Also we might have an
sympathetic advocate in Linda Langenberg over at Des Moines.
My suggestion is to run all future School Board
Elections by absentee Ballot only. No precincts would be open on election day
and some 300 plus temporary workers in Linn County would not be needed.
(Considering all of Iowa we might be talking about ten thousand workers or
more.) Your auditors office would probably have to add on some staff for the
short period ahead of the election when absentee voting commences. And some
larger temporary staff would be needed to open and count all the absentee
ballots but this shouldn't be nearly as much added expense as the full blown
election process.
Further savings would come from the amount of
election specific materials that would be saved. Consider that Hiawatha 1
received 500 ballots for eleven votes. I am sure the same is true for every
precinct. For the close to 50 Cedar Rapids School District precincts that
amounts to tens of thousands of extra unused ballots, even more when the ballots
reserved at the office for emergency excess voting needs are added in. I'll bet
that you don't get much of a bargain when you go to the printer and order those
very-nice thick paper ballots.
I certainly think that this change would get a big
thank you from the various school districts around the state that seem to be
running on a shoe string.
Thank you in advance for your consideration of this
matter.
Lewis E. Staley
--Joel @ 5:14pm