By Cheryl Splain, KnoxPages.com Reporter
MOUNT VERNON — When Rebecca Hunt, liaison for Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office, visited on Thursday, the commissioners voiced their frustration over unfunded mandates and lack of response from state officials on election issues.
“I am looking to find someone that I can trust,” Commissioner Roger Reed told Hunt. “I’m apprehensive that the state understands. That’s what’s frustrating; the state makes all these rules, but they don’t pay for it.”
Commissioner Thom Collier told Hunt that Ohio’s constitution states that the state will provide for elections, but in reality, it is the county that pays. The county will pay nearly $500,000 in election costs this year due to state staffing requirements, early voting, ballots and other expenses.
One frustrating issue for the commissioners is the number of ballots required. Knox County is required to print 1 percent more than the total number of voters in each precinct. Taking a visit to the “morgue of unused ballots,” the commissioners showed Hunt 100 boxes of unused ballots from the last three elections.
“Twelve thousand of the $15,000 we spend on printing is disposed of [by shredding],” Collier told Hunt.
“So you are throwing away over 40 percent,” added Jason Booth, county administrator.
According to Kim Horn, director of the Knox County Board of Elections, those boxes of unused ballots represent slightly more than $13,000 dollars. Over the last three elections, the number of unused ballots averaged 55 percent: 92 percent from the special election in May, 39 percent from the 2016 general election and 33 percent from the 2016 primary election.
Sally Slonaker of the board of elections, left, shows Rebecca Hunt, liaison for Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office, some of the unused ballots sitting in storage. Over the last three elections, about 55 percent of the ballots the state required the county to print were unused. Photo courtesy of the Knox County Commissioners
Another frustration is the lack of reimbursement from the state for voting machines the county purchased in 2016. The board of elections requested the $468,316 purchase because the old machines were 1990 technology. At the time, state legislators indicated counties would be reimbursed for a portion of the cost. That has not happened.
“That’s a major expense that we have already incurred in good faith, and we feel like the state should partner with us and we should get a major share of that back,” Commissioner Teresa Bemiller told Hunt. “Revenue sharing is going by the wayside, but if we stopped doing their [mandates] they wouldn’t like it very well.”
There are 100 boxes of unused ballots waiting to be disposed of by shredding. The unused ballots cost more than $13,000. Photo courtesy of the Knox County Commissioners
