The Boone County Clerk says the Secretary of State didn’t provide enough money to cover the costs of the voter registration database.
Boone County Clerk Wendy Noren said Wednesday that she has fulfilled — to the extent possible — her legal obligations regarding the creation of a statewide voter registration database, but feels the state has failed to ante up sufficient money to cover the county’s costs.
Noren spoke at a news conference in response to Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s announcement Tuesday that she had asked the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene and force Noren to comply with the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Carnahan noted in her release that Boone County is the only one of the state’s 116 voting jurisdictions, 114 of which are counties, that has failed to comply.
Noren said she does not refuse to join the voter registration system; she simply feels that the state government should fully fund the operation.
“I believe in a statewide voter registration list,” Noren said, explaining that her hesitation comes from the cost the county would incur. Taking on the financial responsibility for converting to a statewide system, Noren said, would be an inappropriate use of county taxpayers’ money. She also said it’s the state’s responsibility to set up network security, so that it’s clear who’s responsible if problems with the system occur on election days.
“That would be a serious liability that the county would be taking over,” Noren said, explaining that the conversion would be expensive because the system being implemented is incompatible with Boone County’s computers.
Noren offered what she called a “rough” time line detailing the correspondence between her office and Carnahan’s regarding the voter registration system. Among other things, the time line documents a series of demands by Noren that the state provide the resources for Boone County to make the conversion. Noren said it also documents her compliance with state requests for data, which the secretary of state’s office has yet to successfully convert.
“According to the time line,” she said, “I have, throughout the course of this process, provided everything they had requested at the time they requested it.”
Carnahan spokesman Mike Seitz defended the actions of the secretary of state, saying no other county has reported significant problems with implementing the new registration system.
“The statewide system is designed to work with an Internet connection and with a compatible system,” Seitz said, adding that Noren had plenty of lead time to make the switch.
“Boone County has known since 2002 that this act had been passed by Congress and that they would have to be part of this statewide database,” Seitz said.
The state of Missouri got about $64 million from the federal government to implement provisions of the voting act.
“The money was earmarked for certain purposes,” Seitz said. Along with the creation of a statewide voter database, the money was to cover the cost of new voting equipment and a second-chance voting system that allows voters to review their ballots for errors.
Seitz said Boone County received about $25,000 to upgrade equipment for the statewide database. In a February letter to Carnahan’s office County Counselor John Patton said that amount was insufficient.
Implementing the voter registration system, he wrote, would “almost entirely disrupt our ability to manage elections at our current staffing levels, thereby causing us to incur new and substantial expense in personnel, which we believe is the responsibility of the state.”
While the $25,000 was more than any other county outside major metro areas received to implement the system, Noren said the contribution was laughable in comparison to the actual cost to Boone County. She said the system is incompatible with current equipment and noted that employees sent by the secretary of state’s office to help with the computer system —though “nice” people —were unable to perform necessary functions required by the software.
Ray James, one of two directors of elections for the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners, said the conversion hasn’t cost his taxpayers anything. Kansas City received more than $41,000 to implement the system, according to the secretary of state’s office. It is scheduled to complete its system in time for the August primary elections.
“It’s coming along,” James said, calling the communication between his board and Carnahan’s office effective and regular. “It’s a slow process, but it’s coming along.”
Seitz emphasized that the dispute is not a personal one.
“Clerk Noren has been a great county clerk,” Seitz said, citing several of Noren’s accomplishments while in office. “The bottom line is that we have a federal law here that requires the state of Missouri to implement a statewide voter registration system.”