In an effort to increase voter turnout for school board elections, the state legislature acted this year to move the election that’s historically been held in September, to the same date as the city elections on November 5th.

This spells some changes for what polling locations people will go to and who will cover the costs of the elections. Guthrie County Deputy Auditor of Elections Dani Fink says in the past for school elections residents would all go to the same polling place for that school district. Now those candidates will be put on the ballot for all the general election polling places in the County they represent. Fink says the Auditor’s Office has not fully determined how they plan to bill the school districts and the cities for the election costs, and that the State Auditor’s Office has advised them to see how other counties are handling the change, “My thought is it’ll probably be some type of percentage of the costs. So we’ll just take all the costs as long as it’s equal by precinct and then figure out the best way to divide them out, but voter turnout is going to have to probably be a factor as well. So that’ll be something we’ll look at more once it’s done. Right now we’re really focusing on just making sure that everything’s together and in order, but yeah it’s definitely going to be different.”

Fink adds that they want to ensure they are billing the school districts and cities fairly, explaining that this is their election, and her office is simply the administrator.