Paperwork from GOP straining clerks

Processing the change of party affiliation forms voters filled out during the closed Republican primary election Tuesday is straining the budgets and patience of county clerks.

Because many voters this year had to register as Republicans in order to vote in GOP races, county election offices have stacks of registration forms to review but little extra money to do so. Those changes all have to be entered by hand into the computers by the clerks' offices.

What's more, now that the election is over, voters who were intentionally unaffiliated have been calling in asking how to undo their Republican affiliation, said Julio Garcia, Salt Lake County elections director.

Most voters — up to 70 percent in Salt Lake County — are registered as unaffiliated, Garcia said. In Utah County the figure is 56 percent.

"It's a logistic nightmare," said Kris Swensen, Utah County elections coordinator. "I'm not sure it has solved the problems the Republican Party wanted to solve with closed elections or caused more problems."

On Thursday, Gov. Olene Walker said political parties may need to cover the costs of holding primary elections in the future.

In Utah County and elsewhere, the costs come from having to hire extra help to handle the piles of new paperwork.

In Utah County, elections coordinator Kris Swensen said she has 8,000 forms to process in the next two weeks before moving on to the other elections paperwork her office is responsible for.

Her office, normally consisting of only two people, has had to use its limited budget to hire 14 temporary workers.

Pat Beckstead of Davis County can only afford three temporary workers to handle 5,000 forms. But her budget can only afford the extra help for three weeks. Afterward, her regular staff will be left to process the remaining forms alone, she said.

Garcia didn't have an exact count for the number of forms in Salt Lake County, where almost a half million voters live.

"We do have extra people," he said. "For every election we have to hire seasonal employees."

While county clerk offices receive large numbers of all kinds of registration forms every month, it is the sheer number of affiliation forms filled out at the polls on election day that creates the burden, Swensen said.

The overload of registration forms may have been caused by the federal push to register voters through the Department of Motor Vehicles, said Marilyn Martello, Washington County elections administrator. When former President Bill Clinton made it possible to register to vote while doing paperwork at the DMV, he caused unanticipated problems, she said.