Costs
The structure of costs for conducting secret voting at the state level. The level of costs established in the 2020s. The market size for the computerization of secret voting and the consumers of election services. Prospects for changing these costs through computerization.
Expense Items and Funding Sources
The Cost Structure of Traditional Secret Voting
Costs for organizing in-person secret voting at stationary polling stations include expenses for:
- Material and technical support: Rental of voting premises; purchase or rental of special equipment (ballot boxes, voting booths); procurement of consumables (ballot paper, voter register books, envelopes, seals, etc.).
- Personnel costs: Payment for the work of members of election commissions, observers, and other personnel; remuneration for technical specialists and security.
- Training: Costs for training and instructing staff involved in the electoral process.
- Security and safeguarding: Ensuring law and order during voting and vote counting; payment for the work of law enforcement officers and security agencies.
- Information and communication: Costs for the production and distribution of informational materials (posters, brochures); communication expenses (telephone, internet).
- Transportation: Delivery of equipment and materials; transportation of ballots.
- Long-term storage: Costs for the long-term storage of ballots or other physical carriers of cast votes [s1] .
- Threat protection: Expenses for protection against potential threats to the technologies, facilities, and processes used in elections [s2] .
Costs for organizing secret voting with mobile polling stations, necessary to reach voters unable to visit stationary stations (e.g., due to health reasons or residence in remote/ hard-to-reach areas), include expenses for renting various vehicles (airplanes, ships, trains) and paying per diems to members of expeditionary teams.
The budget always includes a provision for unforeseen expenses and other costs associated with conducting the vote.
Sources and Periodicity of Funding
In different countries, different financial subdivisions are responsible for funding the administration of votes during elections or referendums. Sources can be both federal and local budgets. Furthermore, the level of government involved in financing may depend on the level of the issues put to a vote: national or local. The electoral cycle is typically one year, as elections for various government bodies alternate and by-elections for departed representatives are held.
For example, in most U.S. states, the costs of conducting elections are borne primarily by counties and local governments, although states and the federal government help fund certain aspects of election administration. Some states assume funding for nearly everything related to organizing elections, but more commonly, states pay for a portion of election costs, and local governments pay for the remainder [s3] .
Scale of Costs
The scale of global expenditures on conducting secret ballots can be estimated based on current costs in just four countries: the United States, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, and India.
United States
The cost of administering elections in the United States is difficult to measure accurately due to the highly decentralized structure of election administration and the absence of a unified accounting framework. Election-related expenditures are recorded inconsistently across states and local jurisdictions. In many cases, this variation is associated with differences in the administrative organization of balloting, population density, voting technologies, and funding arrangements, making nationwide aggregation non-trivial [s4] .
Per-voter election administration costs vary significantly by state and jurisdiction. In 2018, they ranged from approximately USD 2 per voter in Michigan to more than USD 15 per voter in Florida. Based on aggregated available data, average election administration costs were estimated at slightly over USD 8 per voter. Using these per-voter estimates, the total nationwide cost of local election administration in a typical year was assessed at approximately USD 2 billion. These values represent estimates derived from incomplete but representative data [s5] .
When broader categories of election-related expenditures are taken into account, total nationwide election costs are substantially higher. In a “normal” (non-pandemic) year, total election expenditures in the United States are estimated to fall within the range of USD 4–6 billion, while expenditures during the 2020 election cycle reached up to USD 10 billion. Projections indicate that average annual election administration costs will remain close to USD 5.3 billion in the coming years, reflecting a sustained long-term upward trend [s6] .
India
The administration of national parliamentary elections in India represents one of the largest and most complex electoral operations in the world. The electoral process is conducted across a vast and geographically diverse territory, including remote mountainous regions, forested areas, islands, and sparsely populated districts. This scale requires extensive logistical coordination, large-scale security deployment, and multi-phase scheduling, making election administration highly resource-intensive [s7]
During the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, approximately 968 million voters were registered, and voting was conducted at more than one million polling stations nationwide. More than 15 million personnel, including government employees and security forces, were involved in organizing and securing the electoral process. Voting was carried out using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) supported by Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) systems. Election materials and personnel were transported by road, rail, air, and water to reach remote and hard-to-access polling locations [s8] .
When election-related expenditures are considered in aggregate, available estimates indicate that the total cost of conducting the 2024 national parliamentary elections in India exceeded USD 10 billion. These estimates primarily reflect administrative, logistical, and operational costs associated with organizing and securing the electoral process and do not include all political party or campaign expenditures. In terms of scale and resources involved, the 2024 elections rank among the most expensive electoral exercises conducted globally [s9] .
Indonesia
In February 2024, Indonesia held presidential elections simultaneously with elections to the House of Representatives (DPR) and the Regional Representative Council (DPD). The consolidated government budget for organizing and conducting these elections, as well as provincial and local legislative elections (DPRD Provinsi and DPRD Kabupaten/Kota) and gubernatorial, regent, and mayoral elections across all 38 provinces and hundreds of districts and cities in November 2024, officially amounted to approximately $4.2 billion [s10] . This figure reflects only government administrative and logistical expenses and does not include political party expenditures or campaign costs.".
United Kingdom
The 2024 UK general election is estimated to cost approximately £161 million (around USD 200 million). This figure reflects government administrative and logistical expenditures associated with the conduct of the general election and does not include the costs of elections held simultaneously for devolved parliaments and assemblies, local authorities, mayoral offices, or police and crime commissioner elections [s11] .
Global Cost Estimates
Comparative analyses of publicly available data on presidential, parliamentary, and regional leadership elections in multiple countries indicate that the average cost per voter typically ranges from USD 4 to 10. These costs show a consistent upward trend over time. At this scale, it can be concluded that globally, dozens of billions of US dollars are spent each year on conducting nationally significant elections.
Global Costs of Vote Computerization
Composition and Scale of Electronic Voting Costs
The global voting systems market comprises various segments. The segment covering EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) systems is divided into Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) systems and systems utilizing paper-based ballots. Among these, the DRE voting system segment held the largest market share, valued at USD 382 million in 2018, and is expected to exceed USD 613.3 million by the end of 2027 [s12] . In 2022, the global market size for voting management software used in groups or organizations was USD 292.51 million, with an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.2%. [s13] . On this market, services supporting elections conducted by government bodies constitute only a small portion.
In 2021, the global online voting system market was valued at USD 292.7 million and is projected to reach USD 736.8 million by 2031. [s14] This represents just a fraction of a percent of the costs borne by countries for conducting politically significant votes.
Costs of Public Opinion Research
The market for polls determining public opinion and/or electoral preferences by all available methods (including electronic surveys) amounted to USD 8.67 billion in 2024 [s15] .The cost per response in these polls is comparable to the cost per click or a complete response set in online surveys conducted by Google (Google Marketing Platform, Surveys 360), which typically ranges from 10 to 50 cents.
Consumers of Secret Ballot Services
2025 Consumer Landscape
The electronic voting systems currently available on the market are used only by professional and industry associations, NGOs, societies and clubs (e.g., golf and country clubs), non-profit organizations, homeowners’ associations, lawyers and accountants, cooperatives and credit unions, trade unions, political parties, churches and religious groups, colleges and universities, K-12 schools, service providers, and similar entities. This user base is defined by the fact that these organizations have no fear of the provided electronic voting system being hacked. For them, the cost of hacking significantly outweighs any potential benefit from such an attack.
Furthermore, the potential for abuse permitted by these systems makes their use dangerous and even harmful their use in politically significant votes. Therefore, their users do not include practically government bodies or agencies acting on behalf of governments.
The composition of the current consumer base dictates the scale of the online voting services market.
Future Consumers
An online voting system that fundamentally excludes the possibility of any abuse, reducing instances of distortion and distrust in socially significant votes to an imperceptible minimum, will inevitably be in high demand. It will be sought by countries, states, territories, cities, and townships—wherever secret ballots are held within electoral cycles. Its adoption would allow these entities to eliminate almost all the costs they currently incur for conducting secret ballots, retaining only the expenses for maintaining voter lists and publishing information about the elections and their results.
A portion of the saved funds could serve as compensation for the providers of such a system.
Thus, there exists a giant, government-funded market that is currently inaccessible to technology providers due to fundamental security problems. Our system, by solving these problems, unlocks access to this market, offering a financing model based on the savings of colossal public funds.