Special election comes with hefty price tag for Kane

GENEVA -- The March 8 special election to fill the empty 14th Congressional seat will cost Kane County almost $500,000.

County Clerk John Cunningham and his chief deputy, Jay Bennett, presented that figure Friday to the County Board's Public Service Committee.

They showed detailed breakout figures that totaled $483,989 to pay for the election to replace former U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Yorkville, who resigned last fall.

More than half of the cost is for training and paying the election judges, which comes to a little more than $272,000, Bennett said. The rest goes toward supplies, polling place rental, overtime for the clerk's office and required printing and public notices.

He said the clerk's office has the money in its budget to pay for it, but will need to replace that money before the November general election. The figure was to put the committee on notice of an additional budget appropriation request that will come later in the year. Committee members voted to send the special election budget to the finance committee so it could start looking for the necessary funds.

Earlier this week, the county's Finance Director Cheryl Pattelli told another county board committee the current 2008 fiscal year surplus stands at about $1.1 million. She said if the sheriff used surplus funds for squad cars, it would leave the projected surplus at about $500,000. "And we have to pay for the special election yet," she said.

For that reason, the judicial and public safety committee held off approving the new cars.

The public service committee did recommend a $20,000 additional appropriation for the County Clerk to buy software for each precinct's judges booth controller, which election judges use to punch out the four-digit code that voters punch into the eSlate machines to pull ballot up to vote.

There were some sporadic problems in some precincts throughout the county, where judges punched the wrong code into the controller, calling up the wrong ballot for specific voters.

In the case of the Feb. 5 primary, the ballots called up were federal ballots, allowing the voters to vote for president, senator and Congress. But no local candidates were on the ballots.

Cunningham said the new software will use a bar code to determine the ballot style, taking the decision by the judges out of it.