Ripple effects of having a special election for circuit clerk are expected to keep lapping the edges of Warren County’s budget.

Paying poll managers and support staff at each of the county’s 22 precincts, contractors with the Election Commission to prepare ballots and a worldwide elections firm to prepare the database could inflate this year’s election budget by $506,305, according to estimates calculated from the commission and county officials after Tuesday’s balloting.

Interim clerk Greg Peltz and former school board member Jan Hyland Daigre face off Nov. 25 after finishing tops among five candidates. Daigre won 39 percent; Peltz received 24 percent. The race generated nearly as much interest as the race for U.S. Senate, as just 3 ½ more votes per precinct were cast in the Cochran-Childers race than were cast in the circuit clerk contest.

By state law, poll managers are paid $145 a day, $20 more daily than poll workers who encode votes, act as bailiffs and manage voter roll books. Though the runoff is 15 days away, state law allows those working the polls to claim up to 35 days of work. Fewer workers and voting machines will be allocated to each precinct for the runoff, reflective of a ballot with just one contest on it, commission chair Sara Carlson Dionne said, adding a skeleton crew of four will be sent to smaller precincts such as Yokena and Oak Ridge and a max of 10 for larger ones like Culkin, where 19 workers were assigned last Tuesday.

“Paying the poll workers is the highest cost,” commission chair Sara Carlson Dionne said when asked to sum up the costs of doing a runoff, brought on by unprecedented upheaval in the clerk’s office that included the office being declared vacant by the county board and continues with the pursuit of more than $1 million the county has argued in court it is owed.

“And some precincts will only have two machines Nov. 25,” Dionne said. “(Cost) might be a good thing to work up when not in the middle of closing one election and opening the next.”

Most conservative of estimates is for each precinct to get the bare-bones minimum of four poll workers. Pay for all 88 of them would total $385,000 if all 35 days were claimed. Twenty-two managers would make $111,650 under the same scenario.

Another $9,655 would be required in four other areas. Eight churches charge the county to use their facilities as a voting precinct, with the average rent being $400. Jim Moore and Donald Oakes would be paid at least $3,000 more to test at least 76 machines if fewer are put out. Printing absentee ballots, even if done using a predictive sample of 5 percent of the roll in each precinct, and preparing a database, done by worldwide elections firm Election Systems & Software, add another $3,455, according to Dionne’s estimates.

“The way election laws are written, I’d say it would cost a lot of money to do a runoff,” County Administrator John Smith said.

Maintaining the courthouse where most candidates and their supporters gather on election nights is a matter of shuffling schedules for deputies assigned as building security.

Four or five deputies assigned to courtrooms during the day could be moved to night duties, Sheriff Martin Pace said.

Public money paid to churches to house voting precincts is an outgrowth of public and private facilities dropping out of the business, essentially. In the past decade, the Carpenters Union Hall on U.S. 61 South and No. 7 Fire Station on Washington Street have been abandoned as polling places due to weather, parking and/or other logistics issues. Both have been replaced by churches for all elections except municipal races.

“We’re happy to have them because we have to have excellent facilities for parking and convenience,” District 5 Supervisor Richard George said. Four of five polling places in his district are churches that have leases with the county for elections.

“They provide a great service for the money we spend,” George said.

State law allows runoffs for the top two finishers in all special elections, judicial races and in certain school districts if no majority is reached. Current law doesn’t allow for runoffs after general elections during the state/county election cycle. A study group of local officials and others convened by Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is considering alternatives to the state’s semi-closed elections system. A final report is expected by year’s end.