Trumbull County would save money with fewer precincts

Trumbull County Board of Elections member Ron Knight failed in his recent attempt to force a reduction in the number of election precincts by using a "starve the beast" tactic.
Having failed in June to get a majority of the board to agree to his proposal to reduce the number of voting precincts in the county, Knight proposed this month to reduce the board's $1.5 million budget request by more than $100,000. Faced with a need to live within the smaller 2007 budget, the staff would have had to come up with a plan to reduce the cost of elections. And about the only way to do that is to reduce the number of precincts.
Trumbull County has 274 precincts. Each precinct must be manned by four workers. Each worker is paid $100 -- not a princely sum, but when the county needs 1,096 workers to cover all the precincts, the cost per general election is $109,600. Not all subdivisions have primary elections, so the cost can be less in May.
But Knight couldn't even get support from his fellow Republican, Craig Bonar, for the budget cut. It's not that Bonar is opposed to having fewer precincts, he didn't think the staff would have time to complete a redistricting by next year's elections. We tend to agree.
Points to ponder
But we also believe that Knight makes a good case for cutting the number of precincts. And he has figures to show that many counties in Ohio have far more potential voters per precinct than Trumbull County. Some would have more even if the number of precincts in Trumbull County were reduced from 274 to 135, as Knight suggests.
And reducing the number of precincts would not necessarily increase the travel time for most voters, because many voting sites already now house more than one precinct.
It is not difficult to understand why Democrats in Trumbull County would be more reluctant than Republicans to reduce the number of precincts.
Each party is entitled to have a precinct committeeman in each precinct. Those committeemen function as the party's worker bees. Democrats have no trouble finding committeemen in each precinct, and in some precincts there are battles for the post. The Republican Party struggles to fill about a third of the openings.
But it is not the responsibility of the taxpayers of Trumbull County to underwrite a system that helps build and maintain a political party's machine.
Board of elections members should start working together on a realistic plan for major reductions in the number of precincts. If they don't, county commissioners should issue a warning that in 2008 they'll force the issue by cutting the board's budget.