Why Are Greenfield's Recall Election Estimates so High?

On Tuesday, , Patch examined what a statewide recall election .

Based on numbers provided by city and village clerks, numbers clerks provided to the Government Accountability Board in early December, Patch learned Greenfield’s estimate of approximately $64,000 was much higher than all of Patch’s other municipalities.

According to , the high price tag is related to how she calculated and submitted her estimate versus how the information was requested.

“I provided the GAB with our total costs, not just the specific costs they were requesting responses for, as other clerks may have done,” Goergen said in an email to Greenfield Patch on Thursday. “I provided our total election costs because I did not feel the questions the GAB asked were all inclusive of total costs related to elections, and would not be a true and accurate representation of our total costs of elections.”

In November, the GAB sent surveys to clerks statewide asking them to estimate costs in eight specific categories: training poll workers/election inspectors; absentee ballot preparation (including postage); memory devices for electronic voting equipment; electronic voting equipment; ballot bags and security seals; wages for poll workers and other election inspectors; staffs’ time; and miscellaneous.

Clerks received the memo requesting the information Nov. 28 and were asked to submit responses by Dec. 9. They were encouraged to use a web portal to submit their responses.

Calling the process of reorganizing her records to fit the GAB's request time consuming, Goergen bypassed the survey and instead emailed the GAB a detailed spreadsheet with costs broken into dozens of more specific categories.

Clerks were asked to estimate costs based on elections in November 2010 and April 2011.