I’m trying to confirm this number from a few other sources, but from what I’ve heard so far, the Ontario Election tonight cost us $94M all-told. They had budgeted for about $60M, but the final cost soared. They’ve already started using $90M as the budget for the next election. The website for the referendum question, YourBigDecision.ca, cost $620,000 alone.

To give you a sense of that amount, that’s 4% of the province’s surplus for 2006-2007. Nice. Couldn’t that buy some schoolbooks or something?

Can you believe we paid that to re-elect the same guy? I almost wish the Green Party got in just so we’d get our money’s worth

UPDATE 10:56pm: I finally found a document confirming this. Here’s the “Projected Costs for the 2007 Provincial General Election and Referendum” (pdf) (Google cache) from the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer. It estimates the cost of the election at $92,944,000. Woah. I was hoping I wasn’t right

UPDATE 10:24am: Sounds like they might have gone over their budget, up to $140M! Keeps getting better