It turns out, to no one at all’s surprise, that it’s a lot more expensive to put on an election during a pandemic than during normal times.
At the Thursday, March 18 Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting, the commissioners are slated to accept $419,640 in reimbursement funds from the state to cover added personnel and operating expenses that the Guilford County elections department incurred due to COVID-19.
Guilford County Board of Elections Director Charlie Collicutt said that equipping the department to prepare it for the November election took more resources than the $419,640 is covering. He said some of the costs are not contained in that amount because many of those costs have already been paid directly by the NC State Board of Elections – so there was no need for the county’s election department to be reimbursed for those funds.
Though the 2020 general election cost a lot more for the county than a normal election, Guilford County has been lucky that most of the costs are being reimbursed by federal COVID-19 relief money that’s passing through the hands of Guilford County government or the North Carolina General Assembly.
Collicutt said that holding an election in a pandemic requires a lot of things elections in the past haven’t – such as gloves, personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer and a separate pen for each voter. He said many of those supplies were provided by the state through the NC State Board of Elections. He added that the state’s election board was a big help in pulling off a successful election – though those safety measures did run up a bill.
“One big expense was the additional voting by mail,” Collicutt said.
He said the county sends out a paper ballot and a return envelope to each person who votes by mail and the mailing cost for each package is usually $1.10 or $1.20.
‘That’s an expensive way to vote,” Collicutt said, adding that, in addition to mailing and printing costs, that method requires extra staff time.
In a normal presidential election, Guilford County would have about 10,000 ballots come in by mail; however, in the last election, that number was roughly 50,000.
Was there a breakdown of the voting of that 50,000@?Was it all ‘Joe or all Trump.Or was it almost all Joe and a small amt .Trump.Was there any corruption in the mail in ballots ?How can a state like Florida be able to vote and have a count at the end of the night.Almost all other states used to do the same thing in years past.NC Election board should go ahead and approve a logical way to handle elections.Please don’t be the laughing stock of the US because the Democrats want to control not only voting but the U S as well.there again Joe has to be the Laughing stock of the world. .A 7 grader could handle the 5 Questions that Joe has been asked for the first two months. Who were the Dems that voted for this guy ,He is an embarrassment to the us .All nations look at cable and see stumbling Joe give 5-10 Minute speeches,even from the teleprompter. Has your gas gone up at the pump yet.Do you miss TRUMP yet???????