The upcoming June election is estimated to cost the city a whopping $250,000 – more than the current average price of a 3-bedroom house in Sacramento – and the November election may come with an even higher price tag. What makes an election so expensive?

For starters, the number of registered voters eligible to participate in the election has an impact on the cost.

According to Campaign Services Manager Brad Buyse, the county Office of Elections – the entity responsible for managing all elections in Sacramento County – uses a formula based on the most recent election and applies it to the number of registered voters to come up with a starting point.

The most recent election was 2010, so cost estimates for the upcoming election are based on the fee schedule for that year. (The 2010 fee schedule can be found HERE.)

Buyse said there are 214,604 registered voters in the city. After applying the fee formula – which comes to almost 50 cents per voter – the estimated cost of the June mayor’s race is $162,180.

The other races will be less expensive because there are fewer registered voters in each district compared to the total in the city, and because the council races are counted as "additional contests" after the first city-wide race (more on that in a minute).

Here is the cost breakdown by district:

District 2: $18,435 – registered voters: 20,744
District 4: $27,522 – registered voters: 32,618
District 6: $23,243 – registered voters: 27,087
District 8: $19,244 – registered voters: 21,673

Another factor in election cost is the number of races – or “contests” in elections lingo – that will be on the ballot.

The number makes a difference, Buyse said, because more contests mean lengthier election materials, adding to printing and mailing costs.

In June, there will be five city races and two county races on the ballot: City Council districts 2, 4, 6 and 8, office of the mayor and the third and fourth county supervisory districts.

A citywide contest – such as the mayoral race or a measure that applies to all city residents – will cost the most because the greater number of registered voters increases the amount of election materials to be distributed.

When it comes to the number of contests, the first on the ballot takes the biggest financial hit. Additional contests cost less – 34 cents per registered voter less– because the additional contests do not create a new ballot, they add to an existing ballot providing a cost break, Buyse said.

In June, the initial cost is applied to the mayoral race because it is the first city-wide contest on the ballot.

In November, if the charter review commission is the initial race, it will bear the greatest cost of that ballot – an estimated $190,000, according to Assistant City Clerk Stephanie Mizuno.

Even if the charter review commission contest is the only one on the ballot, election materials will still have to go out to all registered voters in the city – all 215,000 of them – and that will not be cheap, Buyse said.

Another cost-determining factor is the quantity of ballot material necessary for the election.

In addition to the ballot itself, there are sample ballots and candidate statements to be created, printed and mailed to voters before the election.

And, to make it more complicated – and expensive – each election material item is specific to the district it is being sent to, and all of the information they contain must be translated and printed in three different languages: English, Spanish and Chinese.

“If (the election includes) a measure with a lot of pages that need to be translated, all of that costs money,” Buyse said.

Mizuno said Wednesday that the total estimate for the June City Council races – including the mayoral race – add up to a total of $250,624.

That’s slightly up from the $246,709 total of the 2008 June election, which also included races for the mayor's office and four council districts.

And, Buyse said those cost estimates may go up before the first vote is cast if the number of registered voters increases, or if an unexpected additional measure qualifies for the ballot.

The November election estimates are harder to calculate, Mizuno said, because it is unknown how many – if any – run-off races there may be for council seats or the mayor’s race, or how many candidates there will be for the potential charter commission race.

Buyse said he has great concerns about the charter commission race on the November ballot because of the unknowns involved.

“Because of the number of potential candidates, it could be a four- or five-page ballot,” Buyse said. “We could be looking at something like the Gray Davis recall (in 2003) when there were 137 candidates on the ballot.”

Between multiple races with multiple candidates and the potential for lengthy ballots and election materials, this November could be the most expensive city election in “recent memory,” Buyse said.

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Pres. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.