WASHINGTON, MAY 6 - A new U.S. PIRG Education Fund study
estimated that over $33,467,910.00 of public money from 100 counties
was spent on simple registration implementation and error-correction
issues in 2008.
That boils down to more than $86,977.00 of
the elections budget in counties with populations fewer than 50,000,
over $248,091.00 in counties of 50,000 to 200,000 people, and
$1,079,610.00 in jurisdictions of 200,000 to 1,000,000 people. Some of
the largest counties in the study spent far more than this, for example
St Louis County with a population of 995,118, conservatively spent over
3 million dollars on registration implementation and issues in the 2008
cycle.
“Too much time, effort, and money is spent at the local
level reacting to and paying for our paper-driven, mistake-riddled
registration process. Our system creates challenges for local officials
and wastes taxpayer dollars,” says U.S.PIRG Education Fund Democracy
Advocate, Lisa Gilbert.
Our local election officials should be
able to use the funds that our counties allot for the actual
administration of elections, rather than for the endless data-entry and
error correction processes created by our current registration system.
In Saving Dollars, Saving Democracy,
the U.S. PIRG Education Fund recommends implementing a modernized
automatic registration system to help eliminate some of the burdens
local officials bear and to reallocate funds to enable local officials
to more effectively administer our elections.
U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s Lisa Gilbert added, “It is time to put
these taxpayer dollars into activities that promote our democracy
instead of into entering registration forms.”
