Bucks for Buckeye Voters: An Analysis of Local Registration- Related Costs in Ohio

Few election policy issues have captured more recent attention at the state and local level than voter registration. Across the nation, legislatures and local election offices are transitioning to a greater use of technology to assist voters with creating and updating their registration records – whether via portals for online voter registration (OVR) or programs, known as automatic or automated voter registration (AVR), whereby eligible voters are added to the rolls based on motor vehicle or other government data. The trend follows a strong endorsement for registration reform by the Presidential Commission on Election Administration – and in several states has emerged as a bipartisan compromise that both expands voter rolls and makes them more reliable and secure. The issue is now under consideration in Ohio.

Typically, however, the debate over OVR/AVR is framed in the context of whether they will increase participation and/or create issues regarding the integrity of the voter rolls. Often lost in the discussion is any recognition of the fiscal impacts of registration reform; namely, the degree to which moving away from a predominantly paper-based registration system could result in reduced costs for local election offices.

In order to get a sense of these impacts in Ohio, we constructed and fielded a simple survey, intended to assess what the current field looks like for local election offices regarding costs for voter registration. The results suggest that while costs vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, the data are consistent with arguments that moving away from paper-based registration is a reform that can save states and municipalities resources while making elections more secure.

METHODOLOGY

After reviewing previous studies of voter registration and consulting with election officials across the nation, we built a simple survey using Google Forms with the following questions:

• How many registrations did you process in 2016?
• What were your costs for (full-time) staff related to data entry of paper registration forms?
• What were your costs for staff time postage and paper needed to follow up on missing information or errors on registration forms?
• What were your costs for paper registration forms (layout, printing, etc.)?
• What were your costs for temporary workers and overtime pay for additional voter registration data entry and other duties close to Election Day?
• What were your costs related to issuing counting and notifying voters about provisional ballots necessitated by registration issues?
• What were your costs for duplicate mailings related to duplicate registration entries?
• What were your postage costs associated with forwarding registration forms to the proper recipient (Secretary of State, neighboring jurisdiction, etc.)?

The survey was sent to election officials in all 88 counties in Ohio. Each county received the initial survey invitation, followed by two additional emails seeking and encouraging responses. Many jurisdictions received follow-up phone calls as well. Ultimately, we received 29 responses. ^[1]Counties who responded were Ashland, Auglaize, Carroll, Champaign, Clinton, Crawford, Darke, Defiance, Fairfield, Fayette, Hardin, Highland, Holmes, Jackson, Jefferson, Logan, Medina, Morgan, Morrow, … Continue reading

OVERALL DATA
(for 29 Ohio Counties)

PER PIECE COST
(for 29 Ohio counties)

TAKEAWAYS FROM THE DATA

Based on this data, it is possible to draw some general conclusions:

1. Jurisdictions report median costs that suggest they would save over 4 dollars per registration (and average costs over $5.60) by moving to an alternate form of registration.

The cost data suggests that for counties the median savings is about $4.04 in labor costs per registration by moving away from paper to another registration method – which means that half of the counties surveyed would save at least that much. This figure doesn’t take into account higher savings in larger jurisdictions; to that end, using a simple average of the responses yields cost savings of $5.66 per registration.

2. Some cost savings may accrue to the state as opposed to localities as a result of a switch away from the current system.

A good example of this is the costs associated with printing and layout of registration forms; most respondents reported little or no associated costs because those forms are provided to them for free by the state. Thus, while localities may not themselves see savings from reducing or eliminating the need to print such forms, the state – which currently shoulders those costs – would see the savings, lessening the cost burden overall.

3. Even modest per-piece costs add up given the number of registrations involved.

If you total all the costs reported by the 29 respondents to this survey, you get over $360,000 – suggesting that there are significant cost savings to be realized by moving away from traditional paper-based registration in all 88 counties statewide. Some of these savings are as small as pennies (or fractions thereof) per piece – but given the registration volume involved these numbers can add up quickly.

CONCLUSION

While arriving at a specific cost associated with any election activity – including voter registration – is difficult given wide variation in accounting and data collection across Ohio localities, the data here validates the common-sense notion that a move away from paper-based registration could eliminate or reduce registration-related costs from the state all the way down to the local level.

Further research is required to determine Ohio’s total cost savings of a transition away from paper-based registration towards greater computerization of voter registration, whether through OVR, AVR or other approaches – but the preliminary data here suggests localities should see relief – both per-registration and overall – in the level of financial effort required to manage voter registration.

An IMPORTANT Note on Coverage and Comprehensiveness

NOTE: The counties that did respond may not necessarily be representative of the state as a whole; the 29 counties who provided data have an estimated 2017 population of approximately 1.88 million, or only about 16% of the state. They also are less diverse than the rest of Ohio, covering only about 6% of the state’s nonwhite population according to 2016 estimates.

Moreover, a constant challenge in any effort to survey the field for election costs is the lack of any common “chart of accounts” that makes comparisons difficult. Consequently, many of the respondents informed us either that they did not track registration costs at all or that there was no way to break out the categories included in the survey response. Moreover, not all “non-responses” are the same, either; some counties don’t answer some questions at all while others offer responses noting that some costs are borne by the state or that they don’t engage in the activity being tracked. In other words, not all zeroes are created equal.

For these reasons, one cannot treat the following figures as a reliable estimate of costs in all jurisdictions but rather as a snapshot of certain jurisdictions that can provide background for discussions about the costs and benefits of registration reforms.

With those caveats, detailed analysis of responses received is provided.