The choice of electoral system has a wide range of administrative consequences, and is ultimately dependent not only on a nation's logistical capacity to hold elections, but also on the amount of money that the country can spend. Simply choosing the most straightforward and least expensive system may well be a false economy in the long run, since a dysfunctional electoral system can have a negative impact on a nation's entire political system and its democratic stability. The choice of electoral system will affect a wide range of administrative issues set out in the following paragraphs.
The Drawing of Electoral Boundaries (see Boundary Delimitation)
Any single-member district system requires the time-consuming and expensive process of drawing boundaries for small constituencies defined by population size, cohesiveness, 'community of interest,' and contiguity. Furthermore, this is rarely a one-time task since boundaries are regularly adjusted to reflect population changes. First Past The Post (FPTP), Alternative Vote (AV), and Two-Round System (TRS) systems provide the most administrative headaches on this score. The Block Vote, Single Non-Transferrable vote (SNTV), Parallel, Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP), and Single-Transferrable Vote (STV) systems also require electorates to be demarcated, but are easier to manage because they use fewer and larger multi-member districts.
At the other end of the scale, List PR systems are often the cheapest and easiest to administer. This is because they either use one single national constituency requiring no boundaries to be drawn, or they use very large multi-member districts that dovetail with pre-existing state or provincial boundaries. Transitional elections in Sierra Leone in 1996 had to be conducted under a national List PR system. The country's civil war and the consequent displacement of citizens meant that, even had they wanted to, electoral authorities did not have the population data necessary to draw smaller single-member districts.
The Registration of Voters (see Overview )
Voter registration is the most complex, controversial, and often least successful part of electoral administration. This was demonstrated by the 1996 Zambian elections, where less than half the voting-age population was registered, despite the efforts of a high-profile registration campaign conducted by a private company. Any system that utilises single-member districts usually requires that all voters must be registered within the boundaries of the district. The natural movement of voters thus requires a continual updating of the electoral roll. This means that Parallel and MMP systems join FPTP, AV, and TRS as the most expensive and administratively time-consuming systems in terms of voter registration. The fewer, multi-member districts of the Block Vote, SNTV and STV make the process a little easier, while large-district List PR systems are the least complicated. The simplicity of regional List PR in this context was a contributing factor in its adoption in Cambodia's UN-sponsored transitional elections in 1993 and in South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management. It should be emphasised, however, that variations in electoral systems have only a minor impact on the often extremely high cost of voter registration, see Definitions.
The Design of Ballot Papers
Ballot papers (see Voting Operations) should be as friendly as possible to all voters, to maximize participation and reduce spoilt or 'invalid' votes. This often entails the use of symbols for parties and candidates, photographs, and colours; a number of interesting ballot paper examples are illustrated in this handbook. FPTP and AV ballot papers are often easiest to print and, in most cases, have a relatively small number of names. TRS ballots are similarly easy, but in many cases new ballots have to be printed for a second round of voting, thus effectively doubling the production cost. Similarly, Parallel and MMP systems usually require the printing of at least two ballots, even though they are both for a single election. SNTV, Block Vote, and STV ballots are slightly more complex than FPTP ballots because they will have more candidates, and therefore more symbols and photographs (if these are used). List PR ballot papers can span the continuum of complexity. They can be very simple, as in a closed list system, or quite complex as in a free list system such as Switzerland's, see Switzerland.
Voter Education (see Assessing Voter Needs)
Clearly, the nature of and need for voter education, (see Voter Education) will vary dramatically from society to society, but when it comes to educating voters on how to fill out their ballots, there are identifiable differences between each system. The principles behind voting under preferential systems such as AV or STV are quite complex if they are being used for the first time, and voter education must address this issue, particularly if there are compulsory numbering requirements, as is the case in Australia, see The Alternative Vote in Australia. The same is true of MMP systems: after over 50 years of using MMP, many Germans are still under the misapprehension that both their votes are equal, when the reality is that the second 'national PR' vote is the overriding determinant of party strength in parliament, see Germany: The Original Mixed Member Proportional System. By contrast, the principles behind categorical, single-vote systems such as FPTP or SNTV are very easy to understand. The remaining six systems in Table Five fall somewhere between these two extremes.
The Number and Timing of Elections
FPTP, AV, Block Vote, SNTV, List PR, and STV electoral systems all generally require just one election on one day, see Parliamentary Size. However, Parallel and MMP systems essentially mix two (or more) very different electoral systems together, and therefore have logistical implications for the training of election officials and the way in which people vote. Two-Round Systems are perhaps the most costly and difficult to administer, because they often require the whole electoral process to be repeated a week or a fortnight after the first try.
The Count
FPTP, SNTV, and simple closed-list PR systems are easiest to count, see Vote Counting, as only one vote total figure for each party or candidate is required to work out the results. The Block Vote requires the polling officials to count a number of votes on a single ballot paper. The Parallel and MMP systems nearly always require the counting of two ballot papers. AV and STV, as preferential systems requiring numbers to be marked on the ballot, are more complex to count, particularly in the case of STV, which requires continual re-calculations of surplus transfer values and the like.
Primarily history, context, experience, and resources will determine the stresses, which any electoral system places on a country's administrative capacity. In the abstract, the table below offers some clues to the potential costs of various systems. If equal weight is given to each of the six factors examined in the table (which, it must be said, is unlikely to be the case), a cursory glance at the totals for each system shows that List PR systems, especially national closed-list systems, are the cheapest to run and require fewest administrative resources. Next come FPTP and SNTV systems followed by the Block Vote, AV, STV, Parallel systems and MMP. According to our calculations, the system, which is most likely to put pressure on any county's administrative capacity, is the Two-Round System.
