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Third District Special Election Could Come With A Large Price Tag

Lee Hale, KUER

Utah’s deputy director of elections says he estimates the special election to replace Rep. Jason Chaffetz will cost upwards of $385,000.

Justin Lee gave a cost update to lawmakers on the Executive Offices Subcommittee on Wednesday.

He said coupling the 3rd District’s special election with the municipal election dates is saving the counties more than $1 million dollars. The cost of the election without doing it this way would normally be about $1.5 million. 

“By combining it with the municipal election, estimates from the counties, and there’s a little bit of a range here — because they don’t know who will cancel elections, etcetera — [are] somewhere between $385,000 to $435,000," he said.

Besides printing and mailing ballots, the biggest cost will be organizing elections in cities and towns that did not have a municipal primary already scheduled. Lee said individual counties would be primarily responsible for picking up the tab for the special election. 

County clerks began mailing out ballots for the GOP primary this week. In-person voting is scheduled for August 15. The general election is scheduled for November 7. 

Julia joined KUER in 2016 after a year reporting at the NPR member station in Reno, Nev. During her stint, she covered battleground politics, school overcrowding, and any story that would take her to the crystal blue shores of Lake Tahoe. Her work earned her two regional Edward R. Murrow awards. Originally from the mountains of Western North Carolina, Julia graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2008 with a degree in journalism. She’s worked as both a print and radio reporter in several states and several countries — from the 2008 Beijing Olympics to Dakar, Senegal. Her curiosity about the American West led her to take a spontaneous, one-way road trip to the Great Basin, where she intends to continue preaching the gospel of community journalism, public radio and podcasting. In her spare time, you’ll find her hanging with her beagle Bodhi, taking pictures of her food and watching Patrick Swayze movies.
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