Jasper County Auditor Jenna Jennings has found a way to save the County money on election costs. The County Board of Supervisors have approved the purchase of new software that will allow the County Attorney’s Office to print their own absentee ballots.

“It’s about 27 cents a ballot. We ordered about 27,500 ballots for the last general election. It cost us about $9,400 to do that. So we think we can cut the cost by about half for every election that we are printing our own.”

Jennings says the county had 8,237 absentee ballots cast in the last general election, and notes the number of absentee voters has continued to climb each year. The upfront cost of the hardware and software for the ballot printing is $7,985.