As a rule, electoral budgets tend to be part of the consolidated budget of the nation on an annual cycle. In a non-election year, the budget for the electoral authority— whatever shape it takes—is usually a line item of the national budget or is included within the budget of the larger agency of which the electoral administration is part (e.g., the Ministry of Interior). In an election year, the corresponding budget is funded from the national budget by following ordinary or extraordinary procedures, depending on whether the elections could be anticipated or were called unexpectedly. Flexibility is particularly necessary in parliamentary systems in which governments may collapse unexpectedly or a prime minister may call an election at any time within a given term of office1.
Almost invariably, electoral budgets are prepared by the electoral authority and processed through the finance ministries for approval in the legislature. Most finance ministries do not have the authority, at least formally, to curtail or amend an electoral budget prepared by electoral authorities. Some exchange and bargaining between a ministry and electoral officials may nonetheless ensue. In Australia, for example, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) receives the major part of its funding through government appropriations, which are acts of Parliament that authorize expenditures and appropriate money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund to provide agreed levels of budget funds to government agencies. Budget levels are agreed for the budget year and three succeeding years, according to the stages of the election cycle. Adjustments to funding to cover changes in operational and legislative requirements occur through a formal process of New Policy Proposals involving ministers and the Expenditure Review Committee made up of senior cabinet ministers. Appropriations are made on an outcomes basis, and annual reporting is made in accordance with the outcomes and outputs framework, including performance indicators and targets against which performance can be assessed. Appropriations and all reporting occur on an accrual base, so non-cash expenses (such as depreciation) form part of annual funding levels.
Improved information technology (IT) platforms have helped limit increases in the costs of registration and elections in Australia over the past five years—operational costs in a non-election year have increased by approximately 0.8 percent, and in an election year by 1.3 percent. The Government and the Parliament place constant pressure on the AEC (along with other publicly funded agencies) to continually review its operational performance and to contain costs. The AEC will upgrade its IT capabilities in the next three years to take advantage of the scanning and optical character recognition technologies that can further enhance its roll management systems and its management of elections.
Such a budgetary practice is better established in countries where the state administration has achieved a certain degree of organizational maturity and the legal system is stable. More frequently than not, standard budgetary practices are formally followed at all levels of government (after influencing international financial and monetary agencies as a requirement for aid and trade agreements). Otherwise, the electoral budget for a fresh election after civil conflict, or elections in the midst of unstable times, is usually made on an ad hoc basis and defined with participation of international agencies (e.g., Haiti, Afghanistan). A kind of transitional situation might be that of Cambodia, where elections are funded through a special account at the National Treasury called the Trust Fund Account for Elections. Practically all contributions for elections—private and public, national and international—are deposited in this fund. Guatemala offers an interesting case where a fixed percentage of the national budget (0.5 percent) is allocated by law for the ordinary functioning of the electoral commission. In an election year, the commission follows standard budgetary procedures in defining and requesting the necessary funds for the election.
Afghanistan presents a recent example of how elections are organized in a post-conflict scenario. The October 2004 presidential poll bore many similarities to other electoral processes where the international community has been heavily involved in both the political process and the practicalities of organizing elections. Those processes are inclined to choose high-tech solutions, rather than low-tech alternatives, and a large central election administrative bureaucracy with a distinct international component— which together contribute to a staggering price tag for the electoral process. A unique feature of the Afghanistan election was how early and suddenly the responsibility for planning and implementing the election was handed to the government itself, at least on paper. This marked the first time that a national election authority with no previous experience in organizing elections was charged with implementing its first election—even though the United Nations had a staff of more than 100 people on the ground tasked to work on the electoral process and had the explicit mandate to conduct voter registration prior to polling. The early transfer of responsibility for organizing the elections from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) to the national government became known as the ‘Afghanization’ of the electoral process.
Notes:
1A notable exception is Switzerland, where the electoral budget stays the same in election and non-election years. This is due to the fact that there are almost always three to four referenda at the national level in a non-election year and two to three referenda in an election year.
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