UN report shows how to estimate cost of elections

United Nations, May 19 (UNI) In an era of political-party finance reform and multi-million-dollar campaigns, understanding what elections cost, and why, is crucial to development--especially for fragile states facing competing demands for scarce resource, according to a report launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and an international foundation dealing with the issue (IFES).

''CORE: A Global Survey on the Cost of Registration and Elections'' illustrates comprehensively how to make the voting process more affordable, transparent and legitimate, explaining what measures need to be put in place, from voter registration to ballot-box security, and at what price, before the very first ballot is cast.

''We often talk about the need for 'free and fair' elections, but not enough about how much they cost,'' Pippa Norris, the head of UNDP's Democratic Governance Group, told a news conference yesterday at UN headquarters in New York. ''Whether an election works depends on the money available and how it is spent.'' ''Accurately measuring the cost of elections can be a difficult endeavour,'' said Jeff Fischer of IFES, a co-author of the report.

''Although election budgets are set by public appropriation, the total cost of elections is affected by additional factors, such as the political and security environments, that create a more complex cost structure than is considered by public accountancy alone.'' CORE compares elections in such different democratic environments as stable political conditions in India and Sweden, transitional democracies such as Mexico, and conflict and post-conflict countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti.

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