The Cost of an Election

Tieton’s approach to tied elections got me thinking about the usual cost of an election. Tieton’s city council may have had to pay out the basic costs of an election, but dealing with the tie probably cost them one nice shiny quarter, assuming the winner got to keep it for sentimental value. But for most elections, a tied race could easily have doubled the cost of their elections for the year.

There are a heck of a lot of costs to put on an election, not even considering the money that candidates spend on campaigning. The government’s responsible for things like printing ballots, purchasing voting machines, training and paying judges, dealing with disputes, informing the public when and where elections will be held, and all sorts of other personnel and operating costs. Oh, and those “I voted” stickers? Those cost plenty of money, too.

Because elections are administered on the precinct level, it’s tough to get an idea of the actual national cost in the U.S, so I’d like to run some numbers by you:

Sweden spends around $28 million per national election*, for a voting populace of 6.7 million. In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, 122,267,553 voters turned out. Now, if our elections cost the same per voter as Sweden’s, the cost should be somewhere around $743 million. But other estimates are much lower — closer to $300 million.

*Information is taken from The Ace Electoral Knowledge Network and a 2001 paper by Ernest Hawkins: “The Cost and Finance of Elections”