2015.07.07 WS Combined Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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ELECTION EXPENSE COST ALLOCATION PROCEDURES May, 2002 INTRODUCTION The Secretary of State has developed the following procedures for allocating election costs among local governmental units as required in (Minnesota Statutes Section 204B.32, Subd. 2). The procedures must be followed in determining the election costs to be paid by counties, municipalities, school districts and hospital districts unless they have voluntarily entered into an agreement to assume or share election expenses in another manner. GENERAL FORMULA When a single election process is shared among multiple governments (e.g., county, municipal, school district, or hospital district), total election costs are allocated according to each jurisdiction's share of eligible voters and its share of the total ballot (measured as a percent of the total "column inches" of ballot). Therefore, the general cost allocation formula is: Your share = (total election costs) x (% voters in your jurisdiction) x (your % of ballot). Where precincts are split by one or more school district boundaries, the allocation of the school district share of costs must be distributed among the affected school districts in proportion to the percentage of the total number of registered voters in the precinct who reside in each school district. An exception to this general rule is the cost of paper ballots, which are usually paid for directly by the municipality or school district. With this exception, percentage allocations of total ballot inches can be used as the basis for allocating all election expenses covered by this procedure. Here are two examples of how this formula works. Example one is a school district election conducted in conjunction with a municipal election on an optical scan ballot. All residents of the municipality live in the school district. The front of the ballot contains three columns, each 15 inches long. For this example the back of the ballot was not used. The total ballot has 45 inches of offices and questions, (3 X 15). The school district offices and questions are 10 inches long. So in this example, the school district pays 22% (10/45) of the cost of the election. In the second example the school district is conducting its election in conjunction with a municipal election on paper ballots, and only a third of the municipality's registered voters live in the school district. All of the paper ballots (blue, green, buff, goldenrod, etc.) are pasted together as a single ballot. The total combined length is 30 inches long. Of that 30 inches, the school district offices and questions take up 5 inches. The percentage of ballot length used by the school district is 16.5% (5/30). But because the municipality contains more than one school district, the percentage of ballot length is divided by the percentage of registered voters who reside in the school district. So in this example the school district is responsible for 5.5% of the total election cost, (16.5% x 33%). There are, of course, more complicated situations than presented in these two examples. Still by keeping the basic formula in mind, Your share = (total election costs) x (% voters in your jurisdiction) x (your % of ballot), you should be able to fairly allocate the election expenses.