COMMENT | Recently, we came to know the full cost of Sabah state elections - RM130 million - which was released in a written parliamentary reply earlier this year. This written parliamentary reply warrants an important discussion about the election expenditure.

Elections are costly affairs and due to an attempted political coup in Sabah amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the Malaysian government had to expend RM130 million for one state election. In this article, we will examine the rationale behind election costs and how the country’s election expenditure can be improved.

Fortunately, in this written parliamentary reply, the brief itemised expenditure of the Sabah state elections was displayed. Out of the RM130 million, around RM69 million was spent on rentals and around RM39 million was spent on “professional services, other acquired services, and hospitality”.

In Tindak Malaysia’s existing research of past Election Commission’s (EC) election reports from 1959 to 2004, the presence of itemised election expenditure was only reported for the 1964 Malaysian general elections, the 1967 Sabah state elections, the 1995 Malaysian general elections and the 1999 Malaysian general election.

With this limited information available over the past decades, we were able to shed some light on election expenditure and evolving costs.

In the 1960s election reports produced by the EC, they used to have ...