In the bad old days, corrupt ward bosses paid $2 and a jug of muscatel for a vote. Tuesday, the taxpayers paid as much as $30.
Like everything else, democracy is getting more expensive.
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As voter turnout sank to record lows in much of the Chicago area, the cost of putting on elections soared, at least on a per-voter basis.
Du Page County, for instance, paid nearly $26 to count each vote after only 8.91 percent of registered voters tramped through the snow to the polls.
That’s up from $21.62, the previous record, and way up from the $2.48 the county paid per head in November, when voters stampeded to the polls to choose a president.
“I hope this isn’t a trend,” said a disgusted Daniel Nelson, executive director of the Du Page Board of Election Commissioners.
Things weren’t much better in McHenry County, where 92 percent of registered voters stayed home. And in Will County, Joliet Precinct 45 told the region’s sorry tale.
Only eight of nearly 500 registered voters showed up at Hufford Junior High School to vote for City Council candidates during the 13 hours that polls were open. That’s less than a voter an hour-at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $30 each.
And that figure covers only the $75-per-day salaries of the three election judges, who spent the day crocheting, eating doughnuts and peering hopefully down the hall.
“The few that came in we urged to go back to their apartments and pound on some doors,” said Marilyn Johnson, one of the judges. “One woman said she’d send her daughter, but she didn’t.”
Such is the nature of democracy, that glorious-sounding ideal that all too often turns out as messy and as expensive as an open-face peanut butter and jelly sandwich dropped on a new white rug.
The problem with February primaries, county officials say, is that the bills show up even if the voters don’t.
In each precinct, officials must hire judges, usually at a cost of $75 to $100 each. Five is the norm for major elections, but most counties require three for a February primary, even if they expect low turnout.
Then there are ballots to be printed, both specimens and the real things. By law, election boards must order one ballot per registered voter, plus an extra 10 percent in case of emergencies, a rule Bob Saar of the Du Page Board of Election Commissioners calls “nutty.”
“The highest turnout we ever had (for a February primary) was 35 percent,” he said, “but we have to assume we’re going to get 100 percent turnout.”
Polling places also must be rented, usually at a cost of at least $40 to $50 a day. Legal notices must be placed in newspapers, and county staffs often must work overtime to complete the planning.
In a few places, including parts of Chicago, federal law requires Spanish-language ballots in districts dominated by Spanish-speaking voters. The complicated mix of overlapping districts in Chicago also has forced Cook County Clerk David Orr to print some personalized ballots to ensure that each voter is in the correct district.
It all adds up to a major headache for election officials-and during February primaries, when officials feel especially unappreciated, pounding migraines are the norm.
“We have to go through the same amount of work that we do for a big election, and no one bothers to vote,” sighed McHenry County Clerk Katherine Schultz. “It gets very frustrating.”
The cost of waging a primary campaign also irks the candidates, many of whom say it doubles their cost of running for office because they have two campaigns to fund.
“It’s really been difficult,” said Ann Rainey, one of two survivors in a hotly contested mayoral primary in Evanston.
After spending more than $20,000 in the primary, she has cleaned out her accounts and will have to start fundraising again for the April 20 general election, she said.
“With mostly $25 to $100 contributions, it was difficult the first time, and it’ll be harder the second,” Rainey said.
All this work is particularly hard on everyone when the turnouts are so low.
But February primaries, an every-other-year oddity of the Illinois election system, have low turnouts for a range of reasons.
First, the weather is usually bad and that keeps people at home. Second, there are relatively few exciting races.
The elections also fall in the middle of flu season, when many are sick. The partisan nature of many primaries also attract only Republicans or Democrats. And after voting the previous November, “people are naturally tired of elections,” said Albert Jourdan, the McHenry County and Illinois Republican chairman.
That was evident Tuesday, with turnout figures well below 15 percent in most places.
In Kane County, turnout was only 13.78 percent, despite a seven-way mayor’s race in Aurora. Hilda Flynn, the county director of elections, said it was too early to figure a per-voter cost, but she noted it would be “plenty.”
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Things were slightly better in Cook County, where 17 percent of eligible voters came to the polls, a figure boosted by a 24 percent turnout in the Evanston mayor’s race.
In Lake County, a tiny $21,000 election budget kept the per-voter cost to $2.75, despite low turnout.
But all of this still leads to one question: Why not do away with February primaries?
For one thing, there would be too many races on the spring and fall ballots, Orr said.
After voting for president or representatives, he predicted, voters might quit before they got to the bottom of the ticket.
“Part of the reason we have it this way is people wanted to make sure local elections didn’t get ignored,” Orr said.
A better solution, he said, is to reinvigorate the primaries by improving turnout.
Cook County is studying less painful methods of voting used in other parts of the country, including mailing ballots to homes, extending the voting period to more than one day, and allowing greater use of absentee ballots.
Those measures could cause more vote fraud, Orr warned, but they are being used effectively in places like Oregon that “don’t have the more questionable traditions Cook County has.”
But the best is yet to come. Within 10 years, we could be casting ballots by phone, punching buttons instead of little cards.
“That’s better than saying let’s not hold an election,” Orr said. “Democracy works.”