JAKARTA, KOMPAS – The General Elections Commission (KPU) has decided that the votes for the presidential election will be counted and tabulated first. The voting and vote tabulation mechanism for the 2019 general election is highly complex, and extra efforts would be required to familiarize the public.
The General Elections Commission (KPU) has decided that the vote tabulation for the 2019 general election will start with the presidential election, followed by the House of Representatives, the Regional Representatives Council (DPD), provincial legislative councils and regency/city councils. This decision must be accompanied by adequate public dissemination on the technical complexities of the voting and vote tabulation mechanism in the 2019 general election.
The decision is stipulated in Article 52, Point 6 of the draft KPU Regulation (PKPU) on voting and vote tabulation. The draft PKPU was submitted to the Law and Human Rights Ministry, and a revision was submitted on Thursday (2/14/2019). The PKPU is expected to be authorized in the next few days.
The KPU had earlier mulled a suggestion that the legislative election votes be counted first, but it eventually decided to count the votes for the presidential election first.
“Learning from our experience of past elections, the vote tabulation has always started with [the election for] the highest office. In the 2014 legislative election, we started tabulating the votes for the House, and then the DPD, provincial legislative councils and the regency/city councils,” elections official Wahyu Setiawan said on Thursday at the KPU headquarters in Jakarta.
KPU chair Arief Budiman said the PKPU had already been submitted to the Law and Human Rights Ministry and that it had already been signed.
“We will upload it [to the website]. It should have been done yesterday, but I have not checked to see if it is already online or not,” he said.
Technical complexities
Election observers say that voting day for the 2019 elections, technically, will be highly complex for voters, polling station (TPS) officers and scrutineers. Optimum efforts are necessary to ensure that all stakeholders have a technical understanding of the voting and vote tabulation mechanism.
At least three factors contribute to the technical complexity. One, voters will receive five different ballot papers. In the 2014 election, voters were given four ballot papers, one each for the House, the DPD, provincial legislative council and the regency/city council. The 2014 presidential election was held several months later with its own ballot paper.
Two, more political parties are participating in this year’s election: 16 national parties and four regional parties in Aceh, whereas 12 national parties and three regional parties in Aceh participated in 2014.
Three, the 2019 election carries a new regulation that voters must cast their ballots in their place of origin, and they may not vote in the legislative elections in daerah pemilihan, or the area to which they have migrated. Voters who go to the polls in an area outside their place of origin (constituency) will receive only one ballot for the presidential election. In 2014, voters could cast their ballots for all legislative bodies regardless of where they voted.
“Based on the 2019 Election Vulnerability Index, we have also uncovered potential problems at polling stations. The technical issues have changed drastically this year,” said M. Afifuddin of the Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu).
Afifuddin added that, without proper efforts at familiarization, polling station officers, voters and scrutineers might protest that voters would lose the opportunity to exercise their voting rights if they did not attend the polls in their place of origin. Polling stations may thus see a large difference in the number of votes cast in the presidential and legislative elections.
“People who do not understand this may protest it,” he said.
Network for Democracy and Electoral Integrity (Netgrit) senior researcher Hadar Nafis Gumay, who is a former KPU official, said that this year’s vote tabulation could take three to five hours longer than in 2014 due to the complexities. Hadar said that, the KPU’s 2019 election simulation last year showed that counting the votes at a polling station with 300 voters and under KPU supervision would finish around midnight.
“In 2014, one polling station had an average of 500 voters. It will be less than that [this time], but we have one more ballot box [for the presidential election]. There could also be a discrepancy in the number of votes [at one polling station] due to voters voting outside their hometowns,” he said.
Consequently, Hadar said, a bold move was needed to revert the regulation so voters could go to the polls outside their constituencies, as it was in 2014, and to reduce technical complexities at the polling stations. This could be achieved through a perppu (government regulation in lieu of law). Another option was to file a judicial review with the Constitutional Court on the relevant articles in the Election Law.
He added that the KPU should also disseminate the PKPU on voting and vote tabulation to polling station organizers. TPS organizers must also have adequate capacity.
Hadar expressed concern that the heavy workload and prolonged vote count could diminish the capacity of TPS officers who had to tabulate all votes and record the results on several different forms. Election participants could protest any administrative errors and this could theoretically lead to a revote.
Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) executive director Titi Anggraini said she was concerned that the complex voting mechanism of the 2019 election could lead to a higher prevalence of invalid votes compared to 2014. (INK/GAL)