Voting Machine Cost Calculator

Which is cheaper: manual vote counting or machine vote counting?

The answer may surprise you! Enter your assumptions below and click "Calculate" to see what conclusions result.

Note: This calculator is somewhat incomplete. It does not include:

Maintenance, testing, transport, and storage costs for machines
Training costs for personnel (though note: people must also be trained to use machines)

When entering numbers, keep in mind that with human counting, ballots often must be counted by more than one person as part of verification protocols.

Machine vs. Manual Counting Analysis

Min. human counting hour cost ($):

Max. human counting hour cost ($):

Min. seconds per human-counted ballot:

Max. seconds per human-counted ballot:

Min. voting machine cost ($):

Max. voting machine cost ($):

Min. votes per machine:

Max. votes per machine:

Break-even Analysis:
A machine must last at least ? elections to break even vs. hand-counted ballots, and possibly as many as ?.

Human cost per ballot: $? to $?

Machine cost per ballot: (over 10 elections) $? to $?

Case Study: Santa Barbara, CA (2001)

$1,300,000 spent on a 200-machine system to count 100,000 votes per election.

This calculates to approximately $6,500 per machine, counting 500 votes each.

Related Resources:

Brian Olson's website On voting and election reform On voting machines

Calculator created by Brian Olson
Refactored to modern HTML5 with client-side JavaScript for improved functionality and accessibility.