County should bite bullet on voting reform

Utahns are in a feisty mood these days. The Legislature and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. have essentially told Washington they won't be pushed around when it comes to unfunded mandates to reform public education. So far, this has garnered more admiration than scorn, and it has attracted the attention of major media outlets back East.

Heck, it's even emboldened other states to stand up to the feds, too.

And now Utah County is pumping iron in the political weight room, getting ready to perhaps lift the burden of voting reform all by itself.

Has someone been putting steroids in the drinking water of government buildings?

This newfound courage can be exhilarating in some ways. A decade or so ago, states were fighting mightily against Washington's tendency to tell them what to do, without giving them the money to do it. When you're sitting in the shadows of the Washington Monument, it's easy to enact good solutions you don't have to pay for. Ten years later, little has changed.

But courage can be a close cousin to foolishness. Let's face it, voting reform is not the ideal cause on which to stake your independence.

It's kind of like a midlevel manager telling corporate headquarters to take this job and shove it, just because headquarters wants you to improve the workplace.

Or put it this way: If King George III had been mandating that the colonies made sure people with physical handicaps could vote like everyone else, and that voters had a system in place to warn them if they accidentally voted for two candidates in the same race — well . . . the Boston harbor probably would have been tea-free.

That is, in essence, what all of this is about. After the Florida disaster in 2000, Congress decided to come up with a law that would require the states to make sure that, from now on, every vote counted. Lawmakers decided it would make sense to nudge the states away from punch cards and toward newfangled electronic equipment. As usual, they had no real idea what they were doing. They set up a formula that ended up giving the state of Utah about $20.5 million. The state, after examining the electronic systems available, has estimated it will cost about $25 million to actually make the switch.

That means each county probably will have to come up with some cash on its own. In Utah County's case, that might amount to about $400,000, which is apparently enough to make county leaders dig in their heels. "I'm a cheapskate," the Associated Press quoted County Commissioner Jerry Grover as saying.

But cheapskates sometimes end up paying more in the long run. It's that old cliche about being penny-wise and pound-foolish.