Abstract
We are presenting the results of the CoDE project in this paper, where we investigate the costs per vote of different voting channels in Estonian Local Elections (2017). The elections analyzed involve different processes for casting a vote: Early Voting at County Centers, Advance Voting at County Centers, Advance Voting at Ordinary Voting District Committees, Electronic Voting, Election Day Voting, and Home Voting. Our analysis shows how the administrative costs per e-vote (an electronic vote) are half the price of the second cheapest option (Election Day Voting), representing the most cost-efficient way of organizing elections, given the conditions of this Case Study. Otherwise, different forms of convenience voting have much higher costs, giving us subjects for further discussion on how to organize multichannel elections.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In traditional TD ABC the time per item of output is estimated. However, as is the case with elections, we know precisely how much time is spent on every activity, we receive time per item of output in the manner described above.
References
Alvarez, M.R., et al.: Internet voting in comparative perspective: the case of Estonia. PS Polit. Sci. Polit. 42(3), 497–505 (2009)
De Araújo, J.: Improving public service delivery: the crossroads between NPM and traditional bureaucracy. Public Adm. 79(4), 915–932 (2001)
Attaran, M.: Exploring the relationship between information technology and business process reengineering. Inf. Manag. 41(5), 585–596 (2004)
Barrat Esteve, J., et al.: Votacions electròniques: una eina de gestió pública per a la millora de la qualitat democràtica i la participació política. Escola d’Administració Pública de Catalunya, Barcelona (2018)
Bekkers, V.J.J.M., Zouridis, S.: Electronic service delivery in public administration: some trends and issues. Int. Rev. Adm. Sci. 65(2), 183–195 (1999)
Blais, A., Rubenson, D.: The source of turnout decline: new values or new contexts? Comp. Polit. Stud. 46(1), 95–117 (2013)
Buckley, J.: E-service quality and the public sector. Manag. Serv. Qual. 13(6), 453–462 (2003)
Carter, L., Bélanger, F.: The utilization of e-government services: citizen trust, innovation and acceptance factors. Inf. Syst. J. 15(1), 5–25 (2005)
Cavanagh, T.: Changes in American voter turnout 1967–1976. Polit. Sci. Q. 96(1), 53–65 (1981)
Chowdhury, A.: Cost of voting: estimating the impact of online voting on public finances. The Institute for Digital Democracy, London (2017)
Clark, A.A.: The cost of elections: money well spent? Polit. Insight 5(3), 16–19 (2014)
Codagnone, C.: Measuring e-government: reflections from eGEP measurement framework experience. Eur. Rev. Polit. Technol. 4, 89–106 (2007)
Coleman, S.: Elections in the 21st century: from paper ballot to e-voting. Report by the Independent Commission on Alternative Voting Methods. Electoral Reform Society, London (2002)
Colomer, J.M.: Benefits and costs of voting. Elect. Stud. 10(4), 313–325 (1991)
Kaplan, R.S., Cooper, R.: Activity-based systems: measuring the costs of resource usage, pp. 1–13. Accounting Horizons, September 1992
Downs, A.: An economic theory of political action in a democracy. J. Polit. Econ. 65(2), 135–150 (1957)
Ernsdorff, M., Berbec, A.: Estonia: the short road to e-government and e-democracy. In: Nixon, P., Koutrakou, V. (eds.) E-Government in Europe: Re-booting the State, pp. 228–241. Routledge, New York (2007)
Ernst & Ernst: Election administration Volume III: Costing Elections. Clearinghouse on Election Administration, Washington (1979)
Grabenwarter, C.: Report on the compatibility of remote voting and electronic voting with the standards of the Council of Europe. Council of Europe, Strasbourg (2004)
Gronke, P., et al.: Convenience voting. Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 11(1), 437–455 (2008)
Grover, V., et al.: The implementation of business process reengineering. J. Manag. Inf. Syst. 12(1), 109–144 (1995)
Harada, M., Smith, D.M.: You have to pay to play: candidate and party responses to the high cost of elections in Japan. Elect. Stud. 36, 51–64 (2014)
Haspel, M., Gibbs Knotts, H.: Location, location, location: Precinct placement and the costs of voting. J. Polit. 67(2), 560–573 (2005)
Heeks, R.: Understanding e-Governance for Development. i-Government Working Paper Series, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 1–27 (2001)
James, T.S., Jervier, T.: The cost of elections: the effects of public sector austerity on electoral integrity and voter engagement. Public Money Manag. 37(7), 461–468 (2017)
Johnston, R., Pattie, C.: How much does a vote cost? Incumbency and the impact of campaign spending at English general elections. J. Elections Public Opin. Parties 18(2), 129–152 (2008)
Kalvet, T.: Innovation: a factor explaining e-government success in Estonia. Electron. Gov. Int. J. 9(2), 142–157 (2012)
Kalvet, T.: Management of technology: the case of e-voting in Estonia. In: 2009 International Conference on Computer Technology and Development, ICCTD 2009, pp. 512–515 (2009)
Kaplan, R.S., Anderson, S.R.: Time-driven activity-based costing: a simpler and more powerful path to higher profits, vol. 82, p. 266. Harvard Business School Press Books, Boston (2007)
Kassen, M.: Open data and e-government – related or competing ecosystems: a paradox of open government and promise of civic engagement in Estonia. Inf. Technol. Dev. 1–27 (2017)
Kersting, N., Baldersheim, H.: Electronic Voting and Democracy. Palgrave - MacMillan, New York (2004)
Kitsing, M.: Success without strategy: e-government development in Estonia. Policy Internet 3(1), 1–21 (2011)
Kont, K.-R.: What do acquisition activities really cost? A case study in Estonian university libraries. Libr. Manag. 36(6/7), 511–534 (2015)
Krimmer, R., Triessnig, S., Volkamer, M.: The development of remote e-voting around the world: a review of roads and directions. In: Alkassar, A., Volkamer, M. (eds.) Vote-ID 2007. LNCS, vol. 4896, pp. 1–15. Springer, Heidelberg (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77493-8_1
Krimmer, R., Wendt, F.: Costs of Electronic Voting: An Overview. E-Voting.cc, Vienna (2010)
Layne, K., Lee, J.: Developing fully functional E-government: a four stage model. Gov. Inf. Q. 18(2), 122–136 (2001)
Lijphart, A.: Unequal participation: democracy’s unresolved dilemma. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 91(1), 1–14 (1997)
López-Pintor, R., Fisher, J.: Getting to the Core. A Global Survey on the Cost of Registration and Elections. United Nations Development Programme, New York (2006)
López-Pintor, R., Gratschew, M.: Voter Turnout Since 1945: A Global Report. IDEA Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Stockholm (2002)
Maaten, E., Hall, T.: Improving the transparency of remote e-voting: the Estonian experience. In: Krimmer, R., Grimm, R. (eds.) 3rd International Conference on Electronic Voting 2008, pp. 31–45. Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bregenz (2008)
Margetts, H., Naumann, A.: Government as a Platform: What can Estonia Show the World? Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford (2017)
McLuhan, M.: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. MIT Press, Cambridge (1964)
Anderson, S., Young, S.: Implementing Management Innovations, Lessons Learned from Activity Based Costing in the US Automobile Industry. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Montjoy, R.S.: The changing nature … and costs … of election administration. Public Adm. Rev. 70(6), 867–875 (2010)
Moon, M.J.: The evolution of e-government among municipalities: rhetoric or reality? Public Adm. Rev. 62(4), 424–433 (2002)
Niemi, R.G.: Costs of voting and nonvoting. Public Choice 27(1), 115–119 (1976)
Petithomme, M.: Second-order elections, but also ‘low-cost’ campaigns? National parties and campaign spending in European elections: a comparative analysis. Perspect. Eur. Polit. Soc. 13(2), 149–168 (2012)
Salisbury, R.: Research on political participation. Am. J. Pol. Sci. 19(2), 323–341 (1975)
Springall, D., et al.: Security analysis of the Estonian internet voting system. In: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security - CCS 2014, pp. 703–715. ACM Press, New York (2014)
Szopiński, T., Staniewski, M.W.: Manifestations of e-government usage in post-communist European countries. Internet Res. 27(2), 199–210 (2017)
Toots, M., Kalvet, T., Krimmer, R.: Success in eVoting – success in eDemocracy? The Estonian paradox. In: Tambouris, E., et al. (eds.) ePart 2016. LNCS, vol. 9821, pp. 55–66. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45074-2_5
Vassil, K., et al.: The diffusion of internet voting. Usage patterns of internet voting in Estonia between 2005 and 2015. Gov. Inf. Q. 33(3), 453–459 (2016)
Vassil, K., Weber, T.: A bottleneck model of e-voting: why technology fails to boost turnout. New Media Soc. 13(8), 1336–1354 (2011)
Vinkel, P., Krimmer, R.: The how and why to internet voting an attempt to explain E-Stonia. In: Krimmer, R., et al. (eds.) E-Vote-ID 2016. LNCS, vol. 10141, pp. 178–191. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52240-1_11
VVAA: Information and Communication Technologies for the Public Service: A Small States Focus. Commonwealth Secretariat, London (2008)
Webster, F.: Theories of the Information Society. Routledge, New York (2007)
Wilks-Heeg, S.: Treating voters as an afterthought? The legacies of a decade of electoral modernisation in the United Kingdom. Polit. Q. 80(1), 101–110 (2009)
Xenakis, A., Macintosh, A.: A generic re-engineering methodology for the organized redesign of the electoral process to an e-electoral process. In: Krimmer, R. (ed.) 2nd International Workshop on Electronic Voting, EVOTE 2006, pp. 119–130. Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bregenz (2006)
Xenakis, A., Macintosh, A.: Levels of difficulty in introducing e-voting. In: Traunmüller, R. (ed.) EGOV 2004. LNCS, vol. 3183, pp. 116–121. Springer, Heidelberg (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30078-6_20
Xenakis, A., Macintosh, A.: Procedural security analysis of electronic voting. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 541–546. ACM, New York (2004)
Yildiz, M.: E-government research: reviewing the literature, limitations, and ways forward. Gov. Inf. Q. 24(3), 646–665 (2007)
Council of Europe: 62. Code of Good Practices in Electoral Matters: Guidelines and Explanatory Report. CoE, Venice (2002)
World Bank: EU-8: Administrative Capacity in the New Member States: The Limits of Innovation? Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit, Washington (2006)
Acknowledgment
We extend sincere thanks to Breck Shuyler who was assisting us with modelling of BMPNs and on-site observation during the electoral process. This article is based upon work supported by the Estonian Research Council grant (PUT 1361 “Internet Voting as Additional Channel for Legally Binding Elections: Challenges to Voting Processes Re-engineering”, 2017–2020).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Krimmer, R., Duenas-Cid, D., Krivonosova, I., Vinkel, P., Koitmae, A. (2018). How Much Does an e-Vote Cost? Cost Comparison per Vote in Multichannel Elections in Estonia. In: Krimmer, R., et al. Electronic Voting. E-Vote-ID 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11143. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00419-4_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00419-4_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00418-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00419-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)