Effective budgeting and expenditure control and monitoring systems are significant to the successful management of voting operations. The compressed time frame of large expenditures on and around voting day means that there is little room for error in planning allocations of funds and having effective controls over expenditure.
Styles of budget formats vary, but there are some that are better suited to providing useful frameworks and information, and to identifying where improvements can be made to the cost-effectiveness of voting operations.
Format of Budgets
What should a voting operations budget do?
First, it should be a recording mechanism for allocations and expenditures.
It should be a control mechanism for;
• what funds can be made available, and
• progressively comparing the rate at which financial resources are used against operational functions or objectives achieved,
• so as to predict possible funding shortfalls or over funding
Finally, it should provide an evaluative mechanism through which costs of the various components of voting operations can be compared and assessed, historically and across components.
In conjunction with performance and workload data, such budget information can be used to determine areas of efficiency or inefficiency, trends in cost-effectiveness, and identify cost effective components.
For effective financial control of voting operations, budgets should separate out its various components, both within a voting operations structure and from other election cost elements.
Under different electoral systems and organizational models for electoral management bodies the fine detail of these separations can rightly vary, but internal consistency of treatment and maintaining inter-component comparability is important. This has particular importance where different organizations or agencies contribute resources to voting operations.
If different ways are used to estimate, authorize and record election-related expenditures, both between jurisdictions and over time, meaningful comparative analysis of voting operations financial data can be difficult.
This can also affect the ability to exercise prudent financial control and make it more difficult to identify, both locally and internationally, which are the more cost-effective ways of undertaking voting operations tasks. (Further discussion of this issue can be found in Inclusiveness and Comparability of Budgets.)
Budget Models
What models are available? Broadly speaking, budgets could be devised on several different models:
One is the functional model in which costs are estimated and expenditure monitored against broad type-of-expenditure headings. This model would include broad components such as Staffing, Forms, Material, Computer equipment, Transport, etc. In such models there may be little indication as to what tasks--amongst the many in voting operations, or the election as a whole--are specifically related to particular estimated costs and actual expenditures. This type of model does not reflect specifics in budget detail.
In programme or individual project models estimated costs of and expenditures on individual tasks, or logically grouped tasks, are shown separately. Funding and expenditure for various expenditure types as above can be allocated, monitored and evaluated against the specific tasks for which they are relevant.
If more sophisticated manual or computer systems are available, a model combining the features of both the above frameworks can be implemented with allocations and expenditure broken down both by expenditure type across the whole election, or individually by programme or project. Such models also provide for more reliable tracking of expenditure per item.
Programme and Project Basis
Budget frameworks incorporating a programme and project basis are most effective for both estimating funding needs and controlling expenditure for voting operations.
They ensure that more minor projects, such as processing of candidate nominations, are not lost or overlooked in the overall voting station operations budgets. By separating out expenditures, they enable more rigorous control of costs in each aspect of voting operations.
By aligning budgets to targets or objectives of specific voting operations projects they encourage a widened circle of management responsibility and accountability, and allow more effective evaluation of achievements.
Public budgets for voting operations, due to overall government budgetary policies or legislative requirements or the requirements of external funders, may not be able to take this form. In such cases potential efficiencies and information quality make it still generally worth devoting the additional resources to compiling project budgets for internal management control.
In developing budgets, either a "top down" approach, with funds requirements estimated at an aggregate level and later split, or a "bottom up" approach, with initial estimates compiled at the work unit level and later aggregated, could be taken. (Further discussion of these approaches can be found in Budgeting and Historical Data)
Funding Sources explore further under Electoral Management
Within the above frameworks it is also useful to identify the sources from which funding is to be acquired. This is generally required where international financial assistance for voting operations is being provided or sought.
Often international assistance would stipulate its own accounting and budgeting procedures. Also international assistance may be project specific and may not have an impact on other aspects of the budget.
Such a split would generally show the overall sources of funds, as well as funding sources for specific projects, in a manner similar to the following:
• funds appropriated by the state to the electoral management body;
• other local government agencies' funding;
• donations in kind from other government agencies (possibly security services, computer or communication system use, seconded staff and the like);
• internally funded services provided by local civic/non-government organizations;
• international funding--depending on the type, perhaps broken down into components such as trust funding, parallel financing and cost sharing.
Flexibility
Budgets should be viewed as guides to an efficient expenditure pattern, given that the conditions forecast for the election are consistent, and not as unchangeable documents to be fulfilled no matter what the future circumstances.
An important part of the budgeting system is the definition of review points, triggered either on the basis of elapse of time or proportion of budget expended, where the continued viability of the voting operations budgets is carefully assessed, and decisions on re-allocation of funds, the need to seek additional funding, or identifying savings are made.
Such reviews may not need to be frequent early in the voting operations time line. However, as voting day approaches and expenditure rates accelerate as funds remaining decrease, their frequency will generally need to be increased. Perhaps daily review may become necessary.
Contingencies
Flexibility mechanisms include the development of contingency budgets. Just as contingency procedures or supplies are planned for the possibility of failure of planned voting operations functions, so should contingency budgets for these measures be prepared.
Without these there is no way of determining which may be the more cost-effective means of meeting specific contingencies.
