FLOYD COUNTY — Democracy isn’t free, and for Floyd County it isn’t cheap either.

The tab for Tuesday’s primary will run between $80,000 and $100,000 once all costs are calculated, Floyd County Clerk Linda Moeller said.

“The cost is higher for a primary mostly because of the setup cost and paying for people to execute the election,” she said.

General elections aren’t as expensive because there are fewer candidates and ballots involved. For the latest primary, Floyd had five different types of ballots and nine variant ballot styles.

Printing the multiple ballots drives up expenses, Moeller said.

With 2010 being the last year Floyd’s current voting machines can be used, she supports a move that could save the county money for footing elections.

For every 10,000 voters one polling site is required, and Moeller said Floyd can meet that decree and save money by establishing vote centers. As of Tuesday, Floyd had 54,308 registered voters.

Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita is a supporter of vote centers and has dedicated part of his website to detailing the flexibility and savings they offer.

Basically a vote center has to be adequately sized and have internet capabilities.

Vote centers cut back on staffing levels while taking full advantage of voting machines, according to a state study. The centers utilize mostly electronic poll books instead of traditional paper voting rolls.

A typical voting machine costs about $4,000 and has to be replaced every ten years, according to the study. There are three pilot counties in Indiana using voting centers but they have yet to be introduced on a broad basis.

A county doesn’t have to purchase a building to establish a vote center. For example, a county could choose to rent space in a shopping plaza.

Any voter can receive a correct ballot for their precinct at any voting center in their county.

Floyd’s machines will no longer be certified by the state after the November election, which will mean the County Commission will have to decide how to handle the 2011 city elections.

Moeller said a few machines may be purchased for 2011 with the hope Floyd may switch to vote centers for 2012.

“You don’t need as many machines, you don’t need as many poll workers, you still have paper ballots but a lot less and you don’t need as many different kinds” of ballots, Moeller said of vote centers.

“It’s safe and it’s secure. The counties in Indiana that are using it, voter turnout has gone up and cost has gone down.”

County Commissioner Steve Bush said officials are always open to consider cost-saving measures as long as they don’t damage the election process for voters.

“These are ideas we’ll talk about and work with [Moeller] on to see what’s kind of the best process and way to go that’s also conducive for the voter,” he said.



Waiting on one

By 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, nearly every precinct was counted in Floyd county and the results posted on its website.

But the memory card for Franklin precinct was removed incorrectly, which kept clerk officials at the City-County Building until midnight. The election board, complete with Republican and Democrat representatives, had to count the Franklin results by hand.

Moeller said she never encountered a situation like that before.

Most of the races had been called by the time the Franklin precinct was tallied. Moeller said overall she was pleased with how the primary was conducted.

The voter turnout of 18 percent was actually higher than Moeller expected.

“I thought it would be more like 12 percent,” she said.

There were several uncontested races and not much media attention for the primary, Moeller said.

On his Facebook and Twitter pages, Travis Hankins — a Republican candidate for the U.S. House 9th District race — cited Democrats voting on the GOP ticket in Clark, Floyd and Harrison as being the decisive factor in his loss to Todd Young.

Unofficial results have Young with 34 percent, Hankins with 32 percent and Mike Sodrel with 30 percent of the primary vote.

Of the 9,831 ballots cast in Floyd, 54 percent were for the Republican ticket. In Indiana, voters can choose which primary to participate in without belonging to the party.



Hill, Young start trading shots

Democrat Baron Hill easily won victory in the 9th District primary and will have a chance to stay in his seat in the U.S. House.

Young narrowly beat Hankins and Sodrel in his first political race and earned the GOP nod to take on Hill in November.

While they may be at opposite ends of the experience spectrum, Hill and Young showed they are both capable of verbal sparring.

The candidates attacked each other’s qualifications in statements to the media.

“I am prepared to fight hard in this election against the Obama-Pelosi-Hill machine,” Young said.

Hill said Young is, “already promoting extremist and economically-detrimental ideas” and is not familiar with the 9th District.

“Todd Young is a native of Carmel who only moved to the 9th District a few years ago,” Hill said. “My wife Betty and I are lifelong residents of Southern Indiana, raised our three daughters here and know the people of this district quite well.”

Most of Young’s statement was in regards to the hard primary battle he won after raising more money than his fellow GOP competitors.

“The Republican Party had a deep bench in this primary and now is the time to unite and work together for victory in November,” he said.