Editorial: Separate election panel needs to go

If you're a regular reader of this space, you know that we can — occasionally — make our point in nine lines or fewer. But in the case of the Saturday Soapbox's truncated condemnation of the continued existence of the Aurora Election Commission, a mere nine lines couldn't fully accommodate the string of adjectives required to describe this anachronistic, expensive, ineffective and ridiculous waste of taxpayers' money.

The Aurora Election Commission is 81 years old. It was born in a day when the development of the suburbs, the political landscape and the way that elections were conducted were very different. We are not suggesting that anything that is 81 years old ought to be kicked to the curb. But when it becomes redundant, that is worth considering.

Think of it this way: If you had been paying for home Internet service since the day it became available and your municipality decided to equip every home in your town with high-speed Wi-Fi, wouldn't you drop the old service in a heartbeat? Especially since — if you kept it — you'd be paying for both? That's ostensibly what's going on with running elections in Aurora, the second-largest city in Illinois, spread across four counties: DuPage, Kane, Kendall and Will.

Each county already operates its own election system. If you live anywhere in the city of Aurora, you're paying for the operation and oversight of the Aurora Election Commission as well as the operation and oversight of the county's electoral process in whichever of the four counties you live. And it's not peanuts. The budget has swelled to the point that Kane County is on the hook for about $400,000 a year, while the city of Aurora coughs up more than $600,000.

All Aurora homeowners fund the commission through city taxes, but those on the DuPage County side of town don't receive its services. They register and vote through the DuPage Election Commission.

Aurorans who live in Kendall or Will counties pay once for the election commission through city taxes, and they also pay their respective counties to provide election services they don't use. Those in Kane County are taxed twice for election commission services — once through property taxes that go to the city, and again through taxes they pay to the county.

If the commission were to disband, it would be a significant cost savings for Aurora taxpayers and Kane County taxpayers. Not to mention streamlining the process of tabulating votes and such.

There has been some movement in the last few years, but not enough, to disband the commission. Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner questions whether there is a cheaper way to do it. Even Mike McCoy, a former county board chairman in Kane who has long sat on the Aurora Election Commission, has suggested there is a cheaper way.

But because the commission was created in 1934 through referendum, that is how it must be dissolved. A 2012 proposal to do that fizzled. Maybe if we really were talking about double paying for Internet service here, the electorate would get off the couch and put an end to this thing.