Next June's elections will cost US$558 million

More than 83 million voters will be called to the pollson June 7 to choose around 2,179 public officials throughout Mexico. Everything is paid by citizens, including political campaigns, the ink used on the ballots, the rooms for the media and the budget for the Federal Electoral Court (TEPJF) and the Prosecutor's Office for Electoral Crimes (Fepade).

The 2014-2015 electoral process  is expected to cost 8.5 billion pesos (US$558.2 million). Considering that the nominal list of voters had, until April of this year, 83.56 million voters, the vote of each potential voter costs 103 pesos (US$6.6), according to an analysis of EL UNIVERSAL Data.

Seventeen years ago political parties were given a total of 2.1 billion pesos (US$137.2 million). However, this figure has increased over time. This year ten national political parties received 5.2 billion pesos (US$338.1 million), of which one thousand 1.17 billion (US$76.2 million) were earmarked for campaign expenses.

Given that in the last elections (2012) the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won the majority of votes, it was the party that received more resources this year. The reason is that the current legislation establishes that political parties receive public funding according to the number of votes obtained in the previous elections.

The party to which President Enrique Peña Nieto belongs received1.3 billion pesos (US$88.45 million), more than 20% of the financing for all parties.

Smaller political forces such as Morena, the Humanist Party (PH) and the Social Encounter Party (PES) received 105.1 million pesos each (US$6.8 million), representing 6% of the grand total allotted for the federal elections.