County to get funding aid for election software

Don Pyle, Crawford County clerk, had anticipated spending more than $30,500 to purchase new software and training to upgrade the way the county holds elections.

But he told the County Board of Commissioners on Friday that the bill wouldn't be quite what he'd expected.

A grant from the office of the Kansas Secretary of State to the tune of almost $29,000 means the actual outlay of county funds will only be $1,525, Pyle said.

“The Secretary of State had some extra money available,” Pyle told commissioners Friday. “Not a lot of counties ended up applying (for the funds), so we're going to get about 95 percent of the total cost.

“It's pretty exciting for us. We'll be able to purchase all that and not have to pay out of bunch of money ourselves. A lot of counties are wishing they'd applied after they found out (the state) was giving out 95 percent funding.”

The new software will streamline the way ballots are prepared, Pyle said. Currently, the county has to have about 50 different styles of ballots, one for each voting precinct, he said. In the past, the county paid $250 per precinct for  ballot preparation.

It could cost the county $12,000 or more for a primary election, just for the computer work to get the ballots ready, Pyle said. That didn't include printing costs.

With the new software, the work putting the ballots together and programing the automated ballot scanner to read the ballots can be done in-house, he said. The county would still have to pay to print the individual ballots, but the preparation costs would be greatly reduced.

“For each election, it will probably take us two or three days to do it,” Pyle said. “Before, we were getting charged for someone else to do that.”

Pyle estimated the county could save more than $23,000 in 2008 alone. Through 2011, the savings to the county could amount to almost $50,000, with staff doing the work to prepare ballots and program the counting machines, he said.