The Central Election Commission’s (CEC) budget for next year’s presidential and legislative elections will cost taxpayers nearly NT$2.2 billion (US$67.87 million), an increase of NT$370 million from the 2012 polls, a report by the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Office showed.
Despite the popular perception that combining the two elections saves costs, the Jan. 16 presidential and legislative polls will be more expensive than the first time they were jointly held in 2012, the report said.
The Budget Office report showed that the CEC’s total budget for next year’s elections is NT$2.196 billion, including NT$1.42 billion for the legislative and NT$4.435 million for the presidential elections already spent this year, and an additional NT$773 million for the two elections listed on next year’s budget.
The estimated total budget represented an increase of NT$367.53 million from 2012’s budget of NT$1.829 billion.
A commission official who declined to be named attributed the increase in part to a larger number of eligible voters, which it estimated increased by 880,000 voters, requiring the commission to print more ballots and open additional polling and vote-counting stations.
Miscellaneous expenses accounted for the biggest portion of the increase, the official said, adding that the postponement of the election date for lawmakers added NT$50 million in expenses to the budget.
The budget for public promotion for the elections is estimated at NT$14.56 million, an increase of NT$4 million from 2012’s budget, while projected government subsidies to political candidates is estimated at NT$840 million, an increase of NT$6.87 million, the official said. Both costs fall under miscellaneous expenses.
Election expense per voter is also estimated to rise 22.4 percent from NT$58.49 in 2012 to NT$71.56 next year, the report showed.
The Budget Office added that each civil servant assigned to the CEC or local election commission is to receive a bonus compensation of between NT$4,000 and NT$6,000, depending on the employee’s rank and salary — an expenditure that the office panned as lacking legal and practical necessity.
When asked to comment, the official said that the increase was due to a decision by the Ministry of the Interior to double the extra-duty compensation of civil servants assigned to supervise elections to express the government’s “appreciation for their hard work.”
The Directorate-General of Personnel Administration has yet to rule on the additional overtime pay, the official said.
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