Vote Tabulation Needs Prudence
The votes for the 2019 election must be tabulated carefully to minimize fraud allegations.
JAKARTA, KOMPAS — Prudent and orderly processing in tabulating votes for the 2019 election is necessary to ensure the credibility of the final tally. Prudence will minimize errors that may be perceived as an attempt at electoral fraud by the candidates or their supporters.
The ongoing vote tabulation at the district level must be completed by May 4 at the latest. Subsequent tabulations at the regency/municipal, provincial and national levels are to follow, and the entire process must be completed by May 22.
The General Elections Commission (KPU) published on Thursday (25/4) the latest results of the votes it had counted by Wednesday afternoon (24/4/2019). The data showed varying degrees of completion in the nationwide vote tabulation. Some provinces like North Kalimantan had completed 66 percent of the district-level tabulation, while others like North Sulawesi had counted only 1 percent of its votes. The nationwide district-level tabulation currently averages 10 percent.
In light of the targeted deadline for completing the district-level tabulation, organizers are facing sharp criticisms driven by the tension of political polarization among voters and election candidates.
One of the more vocal criticisms concerns human error while inputting data to the KPU’s vote count information system (Situng). The Situng data is collated separately from the ongoing manual vote count, which will determine the official results of the election. The Situng collates data from C1 forms containing the vote tally at polling stations (TPS) that regency/municipal KPUs then upload to the system.
By 9:45 p.m. on Thursday, the Situng data indicated that Joko Widodo and Ma’ruf Amin were leading with 56.13 percent of the vote, while Prabowo Subianto and Sandiaga Uno were trailing with 43.87 percent. The data included the vote tabulation from 283,063 TPS, or 34.8 percent of the 813,350 TPS nationwide.
Care and caution
Netizens have voiced their suspicions over electoral fraud in the erroneous Situng input, although the KPU has already clarified that it were nothing more than human error.
KPU data on April 24 showed that it had discovered 105 instances of erroneous data input in the Situng, comprising 26 instances that the public had reported with the remainder uncovered through the KPU’s internal monitoring. The errors have been verified and then fixed.
To prevent further mistakes, KPU chair Arief Budiman called on regency, municipal and provincial KPUs to remind all staff to exercise more care. “I have reminded them to be careful, as this is [a sensitive matter]. We don’t want staff errors to be perceived as fraud, [when they are] not actual fraud,” he said.
According to Arief, errors in inputting data had affected the vote tabulation for both presidential candidates.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on the sidelines of his visit to Beijing that inputting errors in the KPU’s Situng system was possible, but pointed out that the Situng was primarily about transparency. The actual results of the election would be determined by the KPU’s tiered manual tabulation.
Unfinished
Separately, the Prabowo-Sandiaga campaign team urged the KPU to continue its investigation into the 17.5 million problematic names in the final voters list (DPT). During a visit to Kompas, Prabowo-Sandiaga media and communications director Hashim Djojohadikusumo said that the problematic data involved many voters sharing birthdates and other issues. He also claimed that the list contained many invalid or manipulated data.
The Prabowo-Sandiaga team had reported the matter to the KPU on Dec. 15, 2018 and submitted digital evidence on March 1, 2019. The team also reported the matter to the Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) on April 11. “We [believe] that the KPU has not been thorough and detailed in verifying the problematic DPT [data]. This is disappointing, as it opens an opportunity for fraud using the problematic DPT,” said Hashim.
Bawaslu member Fritz Edward Siregar said the agency had followed up on the report by recommending the KPU to investigate the matter.
The KPU’s Viryan Aziz said the commission was coordinating with the Home Ministry’s director general of population and civil records on the problem of voters who had forgotten their birthdates while registering and voters who did not know their actual date of birth. The KPU had also factually verified the data and held focused group discussions with demographists and statisticians from several universities. Based on this verification process, the KPU had deemed the data was credible and in accordance with the regulation on population records.
Separately, Joko-Ma’ruf legal and advocacy director Ade Irfan Pulungan said that the Prabowo-Sandiaga camp’s complaints to the KPU were part of its efforts to delegitimize the election. He stressed the KPU had worked hard in following up on the complaints. (INK/MTK/BOW/NTA)