Basic Considerations
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 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. (For a discussion of the internal development of election budget estimates, see Internal Development of Estimates.)
Timing of Funds Release
Not only certainty of funding, but also appropriate timing of release of approved funding for voting operations to the electoral management body, is critical for ensuring effective operations (see Timing for Electoral Funding).
Certainty of Funding
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, and that
- 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 intervalls, 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. (For processes of submission and approval of election budgets, see Submission and Justification of Request to Legislature.)
Services Provided by Other Organisations
There will be specific additional considerations where funding for voting operations activities is derived from sources outside budgets controlled by the electoral management body. There are a number of possible scenarios where this may occur, each requiring vigilance by the electoral management body to ensure that expected funds for voting operations materialise.
Where other state organisations provide voting operations services at no charge to the electoral management body, it must be ensured that these other 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;
- 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;
- staff of other government agencies are made available for duty as polling officials 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 these other agencies in providing these services--particularly in overtime or other additional staffing costs, but also for additional materials, equipment maintenance and possibly acquisition of additional equipment, to meet the service levels required for voting operations support.
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 organisations or local non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the electoral management body must be sure that commitments to provide services are solidly supported by the funds available to such organisations. (For mechanisms to deal with budgeting issues related to external assistance, see Budgeting/finance.)
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 to conduct elections for higher tiers of representative government;
- in less developed 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 transfer of funds to ensure that:
- accountability and audit mechanisms are in place to prevent inefficiencies through 'double-dipping' for voting operations funds from sources at different levels of government;
- such transfer of funds takes place on the basis of an acquitted advance, rather than on the basis of a reimbursement of voting operations expenditure.
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 less developed societies
Justification of Voting Operations Funding Needs
Voting operations are but one of many competing programs for limited public financial resources. Voting operations generally compete 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.
Use of Project Costings
Justification of proposed expenditures, and assurance of necessary funding, will be considerably easier where a budgeting model that provides activity or project costings 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, thus allowing clear demonstration in budget proposal supporting papers of the effects of any cuts to proposed expenditures, and a prioritisation 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 (see Reconciliation of Budget to Available Funds).
