Costs of elections include costs incurred in undertaking activities in support of the functions of the electoral cycle – including among others voter registration, boundary delimitation, civic and voter education, professional development and training, voting operations, result tabulation and transmission of results, audits etc. Substantial sums are spent on the procurement of goods and services in support of these activities.
The most expensive type of elections are ‘first generation’ elections carr ied out in post-conflict countries or in newly formed States. The most expensive activities typically relate to the setting up of the election administration and its territorial structure (the so called “securitisation” of the elections), the first voter registration exercise of eligible voters from new, the procurement and distribution of election materials, the recruitment and training of inexperienced staff, the development of an initial stakeholders’ capacity, extensive voter information and education campaigns.
Other relevant costs that might have a big impact on the budget are transportation (including vehicles, boats, helicopters, charter planes) and security, especially in relation to the specific electoral event. In some extreme cases like Afghanistan and Iraq, these costs might reach almost 50% of the budget.
Second or third generation elections might still incur high implementation costs related to, for example, higher voter registration costs and systematic improvements to existing technology but in general terms, cost reductions should arise over time due to improvements in planning and training, and the re-use of equipment (polling station kits and the like). Ideally, a country should aim to bring its electoral costs down from one electoral cycle to the subsequent one. The reduction might be expressed as a percentage of the total costs of the previous election, such that cumulative reductions will enable national appropriation of the total costs. However, there are many relevant logistical (e.g. security concerns, geographical extension of the country, weather conditions) and technical/political factors (e.g. electoral systems and voter registration systems) that might keep costs high. Other key operational decisions to be taken by the EMB can considerably affect the electoral budget, such as the decision to increase security features to be applied to ballot papers (increasing design and printing costs), or to increase the level of technology to be introduced from new.
Procurement costs constitute a bulk of electoral budgets. Tracking the costs of procurement and establishing a well-functioning budget, however, are complex tasks. While the price of the goods and services to be bought can be well-known, procurement officers need to take into account less visible costs related to, for example, acquisition, installation, maintenance, storage and disposal. These costs also include training of electoral staff using technology, and consequences that can occur if training has been poor. Hidden costs equally include supervision (operational and technical).
Consecutive electoral cycles need to be taken into consideration when estimating the following distinctive costs in the budget:
These are all costs which impact sustainability and constitute the so called ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ (TCO). Erroneously, often only purchase price is taken into account in assessing value for money. Cost effectiveness, involving direct and indirect costs as mentioned above, need to be well understood. At the same time TCO may be difficult to quantify, where “Creative” TCO calculations are also a possible source of tender manipulation and inflation of prices. Applying common sense – especially in cases of big discrepancies – can help.
