Marathon, problem-plagued N.L. election was costliest on record
CBC
The 2021 Newfoundland and Labrador general election wasn't just the longest in the province's history — it was also the costliest.
Numbers obtained by CBC News peg the current bill for the 2021 election at $7.61 million. That's about 60 per cent greater than the $4.86 million Elections NL spent on the 2019 election and about 30 per cent more than the $5.87 million the agency spent on the 2015 race.
Postage and salaries are mostly to blame, said Travis Wooley, the province's assistant chief electoral officer, in an email Thursday.
Wooley added the final bill is still being tallied, as "some subsidies to candidates are payable" and "we still have one staff member at HQ working on the election finance filings."
In 2019, when just 9,300 voters cast special ballots, sending voting kits by mail cost Elections NL around $341,000. The agency was also able to save money by using surplus pre-paid envelopes from previous elections.
Two years later, when the 2021 campaign was thrown into turmoil by a sudden COVID-19 outbreak that forced Elections NL to scrap all in-person voting hours before polls opened, more than 100,000 people cast mail-in ballots. The bill jumped nearly 400 per cent, to $1.69 million.
For the 2021 vote, Elections NL paid $3.62 million in salaries, a 37 per cent increase over the 2.69 million it spent on payroll in 2019. However, Wooley said that bump was mostly expected and built into his agency's budget from the beginning.