Fix Voter Lists for the Sake of Human Rights

KOMPAS/P RADITYA MAHENDRA YASA

A voter list for the 2019 general election is displayed at the Kaliwiru subdistrict office in Semarang, Central Java, on Tuesday (16/10/2018). Residents can also check the area’s complete voter list online.

Problems surrounding voter registration are seemingly never-ending. Issues keep cropping up ahead of every election. This is closely related to human rights and the very foundation of democracy.

The recent report that there was still around 31.9 million unsynchronized voters’ data in the final voter list (DPT) was truly shocking. The figure came up in a comparison between the data of the 196 million voters in the potential voters list (DP4) and the 185 million domestic voters in the first stage of the improved voters list (DPTHP).

Why are we shocked? Because this reminds us of the nation’s bad experience regarding DPT in the 2009 election. At the time, the number of eligible voters unregistered in the DPT was estimated to reach between 10 percent and 15 percent.

Apart from unsynchronized data, millions of others were believed to have been excluded from the DPT due to population administration problems. This was indicated by the number of voters in the DPTHP being far below that in the DP4.

There will be 5 million new voters who will reach 17 years of age between Jan. 1 and April 17, 2019, who will not yet get their electronic ID cards (e-KTP). There are around 6 million voters who have yet to obtain citizenship identity numbers (NIK) or e-KTPs. Not to mention citizens living on disputed lands or forests who are not eligible for e-KTP services.

Complaints about the DPT’s poor quality have also been made by our readers through letters to us. In a letter dated Oct. 8, 2018, a Kompas reader complained that no one in his family was listed in the DPTs for the 2009 legislative and presidential elections as well as the 2018 regional election. The reader had asked the village office about this numerous times but there was never any clear answer.

The right to vote is a basic right of every citizen. The state is required to fulfill this right.

As the world’s third-largest democracy after the US and India, Indonesia must be able to ensure that all of its citizens aged 17 years or older, or married, by election day are able to exercise their voting right as stipulated in the Election Law.

Through using their voting right, all voters, be they intelligent or less so, rich or poor, living in urban centers or rural areas, a professor or an uneducated person, are involved in the running of the government by choosing the president, vice president and members of all levels of legislative bodies.

Eliminating this voting right due to poor population and election administration will mean eliminating this involvement.

We truly hope that the General Elections Commission (KPU) and the Home Ministry will see this problem as a highly serious one and immediately fix it. Respect of human rights and democracy is at stake.