An analysis of Snohomish County’s switch last year to all-mail ballots shows elections are costing about the same.

“Right now, it’s cost neutral,” said county Auditor Carolyn Diepenbrock, former election manager. “Vote-by-mail is not cheaper.”

The move to the mailbox avoided spending about $1 million on new election equipment required by the state Legislature and $670,000 in other increased costs for storage and offices.

The remaining election costs are a wash, even though poll workers are no longer drawing paychecks and machines no longer need costly maintenance, officials said.

The November election – the county’s first all-mail general election and the largest of its kind in the state – racked up $810,000 in costs.

Officials sent ballots to 334,000 voters for statewide initiatives and positions in the Legislature, and more than 208,000 ballots were cast.

The most comparable recent general election, the 2004 presidential election, cost $897,000. About 200,000 voters cast ballots by mail and 96,000 voted in polling places.

The final election costs between the two years show about a 10 percent drop, but many cost factors are at play that balance out, officials say.

In general, costs have shifted from paying workers to buying materials and paying vendors to print, sort and mail ballots.

“Elections are very labor-intensive, and people don’t understand how difficult it is to get the correct ballot to them,” Diepenbrock said.

In 2004, the county spent more than $215,000 on polling places, workers at polling places and maintenance of touch-screen voting machines. In 2006, it did not incur those costs, Diepenbrock said.

With new ballot processing software and streamlined operations in place for 2006, the county shaved another $68,000 in overtime and salaries for temporary election workers.

The county didn’t do away with all workers in the field. In 2006, elections officials paid about $23,000 to ballot collection center workers at coffee shops and grocery stores. The money also covered staff to mind a handful of electronic voting machines at the Everett transit center.

The big costs of running an all-mail election are in printing, sorting and mailing ballots, Diepenbrock said.

The county spent $405,000 mailing ballots in 2006 – $163,000 more than the election two years before.

There’s more to mailing ballots than just licking stamps. Costs are related to the use of special secure envelopes, maintenance of voter address databases and the printing of multiple types of ballots.

Costs can be compared in some ways between the 2004 and 2006 general elections, but only partially, because 2006 wasn’t a presidential election year, Diepenbrock said.

“There was a lot of participation, but we will not really see the impact of going all-mail until the next presidential election,” Diepenbrock said.

She predicts that election costs in 2008 likely will be stable except for rising salaries.

“Through good technology and good management, we will continue to minimize the costs of elections,” Diepenbrock said.

Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.