Staffing and Training

Except in societies where polling staff volunteer their services or serve as a compulsory civic duty which is not compensated financially, the major item of voting operations expenditure is likely to be staffing costs. Hence, efficiencies that can be made here will generally impact greatly on overall election cost-effectiveness. Specific costs that will need to be considered include:

• permanent electoral management body staff salaries and associated costs for overtime, travel and meal allowances;
• wages for temporary election administration staff, in field offices and at electoral management body headquarters, salaries and associated payments for training, overtime, travel and meal allowances;
• polling officials' wages, and any associated payments for training, travel allowances, meal allowances or food supplies;
• any special facilities to be provided to polling officials or administration staff, such as vehicles and temporary accommodation in remote areas;
• any additional recruitment costs for temporary staff.

Measures that may be taken to enhance cost-effectiveness in relation to these resources include:

• use of staff or polling officials who can be employed free of charge, either through secondment from other government agencies or on a voluntary basis;
• retention of staff from past elections, which can reduce both recruitment costs and training costs as well as increase overall efficiency of operations and voter service;
• use of an effective standard system, based on tested workload capacities, for allocating numbers of polling officials to each voting station (see Voting Operations Staffing Profiles).