For the electoral management body to be able to plan the implementation of voting operations on a sound basis there must be an assurance that the funds required for voting operations will be made available. Uncertainty as to funding availability will lead to inefficiencies in operations, constrained leadership and a potential loss of integrity.
It is the responsibility of election administrators to ensure that requests for funding have been rigorously examined internally to ensure that they represent cost effective solutions to the legislative and service requirements for voting and that funding provided is spent wisely. This does not necessarily mean that voting is conducted in the cheapest possible manner, but rather that the electoral management body provides "value for money" in the level of voting operations services implemented.
Timing of Funds Release
Not only certainty of funding, but also appropriate timing of release to the electoral management body of approved funding for voting operations is critical for ensuring effective operations.
Certainty of Funding
To ensure certainty of operations and the integrity of the electoral process election administrators must be assured in advance of the funding that will be available for voting operations. This requires that:
• known and preferably public mechanisms for submission of estimates to and approval of funds by the relevant legislatures are in place;
• election administrators ensure that voting operations budgets are developed and integrated into the normal governmental budgetary approval cycle;
• mechanisms for approval of additional voting operations funding by legislatures exist to cover unforeseen contingencies, such as late changes to legislative frameworks, and in systems where elections are not held at fixed intervals, are available and effective.
Governmental funds for voting operations should be part of funding specifically allocated for election purposes. This may be easier where a separate body is responsible for the conduct of elections, rather than elections being one responsibility of a state or local government department or agency.
In the latter case, particularly in environments where general accountability controls are weak, tight audit mechanisms may be required to ensure that funding intended for voting operations purposes is used as intended.
Services Provided By Other Organizations
There will be specific additional considerations where funding for voting operations activities is derived from sources outside budgets controlled by the electoral management body. This situation requires vigilance by the electoral management body to ensure that funding expected for voting operations materializes.
Where other state organizations provide voting operations services at no charge to the electoral management body, it must be ensured that these bodies have the capacity to fund these services from within their own budgets to the level required by the electoral management body.
It would generally be preferable for the costs of providing these inter-agency services to be budgeted for and paid by the electoral management body. This tends to promote efficiency, may allow more direct control of processes, and provides a sounder basis for comparing activity costs. However, this may not always happen. Examples of this could be where:
• premises for voting stations or temporary election management local offices are provided by other state agencies free of direct charge, e.g. schools or town halls;
• security forces (police and/or military) provide voting operations security free of direct charge;
• use is made of other state agencies' communication networks for communication with voting stations;
• computer networks operated by other state agencies are used for processing voting operations data free of direct charge;
• staffs of other government agencies are made available for duty as voting station officers or for election administration but are paid for these duties within their normal salary arrangements with their usual employer.
Funding for Additional Costs Incurred
There may be significant additional costs incurred by other agencies in providing these services--particularly in overtime or other additional staffing costs. Additional materials, equipment maintenance and possibly acquisition of additional equipment, to meet the service levels required for voting operations support, may also result in additional costs.
Some costs of free-of-charge services provided may not be immediately apparent. Staff of other agencies engaged in voting operations support duties may not incur additional costs at the time, but the normal work foregone may require additional expenditure at a later date to be completed on schedule.
It would be preferable that funds to be used for voting operations support by other state agencies were a specifically appropriated item within their budgets, rather than relying on sufficient excess from normal operating budgets being available to meet voting operations needs.
NGOs and International Assistance
Where essential voting operations activities are being provided and funded by international organizations or local non-government organizations (NGOs), the electoral management body must be sure that commitments to provide services are solidly supported by the funds available to such organizations.
Governmental Funding Responsibility
Voting operations, in common with other electoral expenditures, would generally be funded through the particular level of representative government for which the election is being conducted. However, there will be circumstances where inter-governmental transfers of funds may be necessary to ensure consistency, equity and integrity in voting operations processes, such as:
• when new tiers of representative government are being introduced;
• where local or provincial administrations are responsible for conduct of elections for higher tiers of representative government;
• in developing environments;
• where there are gross inequalities in the funding base available to the various governments at provincial or local levels within a country.
Care should be taken in implementing mechanisms for such funds transfers to ensure that:
• accountability and audit mechanisms are in place to prevent inefficiencies through duplicate expenditure for voting operations funds from sources at different levels of government;
• where such funds transfers take place they are on an acquitted advance, rather than a reimbursement of voting operations expenditure basis.
Using the latter method generally will not assist, and may exacerbate, funding deficiencies in specific administrative areas. This issue can be particularly pertinent for elections at lower tiers of government in developing societies.
Justification of Voting Operations Funding Needs
Despite the importance of voting operation, it is one of many competing programmes for limited public financial resources. Voting operations is competing not only with other election-related expenditures--voter registration, voter education, and the like--but also within the wide sphere of services to be provided by governments.
In order to obtain the proposed budgeted funding for voting operations, election administrators will need to convince controllers of the public purse strings that proposed expenditures are:
• cost-effective in delivering the services required by the legislative framework for voting operations;
• necessary to maintain the integrity and service levels appropriate for the election.
Generally is it is preferable to have the legislature determining the amount and release of the required budget to the electoral management body.
The legislature can vote on the release date of the funding, whereas if the ministry has control over the release of funding delays may occur through bureaucratic inefficiency.
Use of Project Costing
Justification of proposed expenditures, and assurance of necessary funding, will be considerably easier where a budgeting model that provides activity or project costing has been adopted (see Budgeting Systems).
Advantages of using this method in providing justifications for proposed expenditures include:
• it allows clear demonstration of the cost-effectiveness of the voting operations activities proposed through development of unit cost data;
• the impacts of the various activities on voting operations processes can be more easily shown. This shows in budget proposal supporting papers the effects of any cuts to proposed expenditures, and a prioritization of services that will be reduced or eliminated in order to reconcile activities with any funding shortfalls;
• if approved funding is less than the proposed budget, it provides a clearer framework for speedy revision by the electoral management body of proposed expenditures in order to reconcile these with approved funding.
Critical Time Frames and Funds Availability
It is critical to ensure effective preparation for voting operations that not only an adequate level of financial resources is received, but that the timing of the availability of funds is compatible with the critical intervals in the election preparation calendar. There are two basic issues to be addressed:
- The electoral management body's internal voting operations estimates system must be organized on a schedule that allows early identification of the funding requirements. The more complex the administrative structure of the electoral management body and the greater the number of different agencies involved in voting operations service provisions, the longer voting operations estimates are likely to take to prepare. This must be taken into account in internal budget planning timetables.
- Where legislatures approve and revise state budgets at infrequent, fixed intervals, provision needs to be made in environments where elections are not also at regular intervals for examination and approval, at relatively short notice, of the release of funds for voting operations purposes. Methods will differ according to the state budget management strategies. Preferably, the approved budget for voting operations will already be known by the time of formal announcement of an election date.
Approval of Emergency Funding
Mechanisms for state approval of additional emergency voting operations funding need to be in place and capable of functioning to allow a timely release of additional funds. Additional emergency funding may be required due to changed circumstances (often the result of changes to election legal frameworks close to voting day), or cost overruns prior to voting day, While it is the responsibility of election managers to keep within allocated funding, in changing environments perfect estimation of requirements may not be possible.
Inability to provide certainty of any additional emergency funding required to achieve a quality election is more likely to punish the legislature, through the potential doubts about election legitimacy, rather than the election managers.
Forward Purchases
Many vital components for successful voting operations, such as development of computer systems and acquisition of equipment and supplies, can be undertaken well in advance of the actual period for voting. In particular, there is a need for sufficient time for proper bidding and tender processes and adjudication of bids to allow cost-effective purchasing.
Where permanent electoral management bodies are in place the costs of such forward work may be accounted for by proposals within their normal operation budgets. When temporary bodies are appointed, it is essential that immediate funding for election preparations be released, possibly as an advance pending the submission of a detailed budget for approval.
International Bodies
The role of international bodies or other governments in providing financial assistance for an election also needs to be determined by the effective time for release of funds. This may become a more complex issue, as international bodies will be driven by approval processes for their own funding, that may not be in synchronization with the election funding time frames in the recipient country.
Also in developing countries, emerging from conflict situations, the release of donor funding for electoral operations may be determined by inter and external political considerations.
Late release of international assistance funding has the potential to cause damage rather than aid effective election operations, particularly where it is for complex systems which then have to be implemented in a highly compressed time frame - for example, to provide funds for a computerized vote counting system a few days before voting day.
