I'd also note that issues like abolition and universal suffrage are qualitatively distinct from the issue of a minimum guaranteed income (what the quote addresses). Even the poorest of societies can avoid holding slaves or placing women or men in legally inferior roles.
Elections can take quite a bit of resources to run when you have a large voting population...
No, politicians can afford to spend lots of money on them. The actual mechanism of elections have never, so far as I know, been all that expensive pre-computation.
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules: