JAKARTA, KOMPAS – The Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) on Thursday (16/5/2019) concluded that the General Elections Commission (KPU) had committed administrative violations in the data input mechanism of its vote tabulation information system (Situng). However, Bawaslu requested that the KPU maintain Situng for reasons of transparency in the organizing of elections.
In a session chaired by Bawaslu head Abhan, Bawaslu instructed the KPU to improve Situng data entry procedures.
A complaint concerning Situng was filed by the Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno national campaign team’s advocacy and legal director, Sufmi Dasco Ahmad. In the complaint, Sufmi claimed that Situng had caused public turmoil and unrest due to inaccurate data entry, which he said had benefited one candidate pair at the expense of the other.
The KPU established Situng to publicly display its real count process based on the C1 forms or vote tallies at polling stations nationwide. However, the displayed vote tabulation on Situng was not the basis for determining the results of the 2019 election. Tiered vote recapitulation is still done manually.
On following up on Bawaslu’s ruling, KPU commissioner IlhamSaputra said that apart from fixing data entry errors, the KPU would increase its focus on data accuracy. This would be done by hiring more data verifiers to recheck the final data before it is uploaded to the KPU website. Hopefully, this will minimize mistakes, including human error.
However, Ilham emphasized that the displayed vote tabulation on Situng would not determine the election results and that the Bawaslu ruling would not affect the vote recapitulation process of the 2019 election.
Sufmi said the ruling would serve as a lesson that election organizers had been neglectful and that this should not happen again. He said the KPU should fix C1 data entry errors that had been uploaded.
On the same day, Bawaslu also said the KPU had violated election administration procedures related to the administration of quick counts by survey agencies.
Seven provinces left
By Thursday, the KPU had completed the vote recapitulation for West Java, bringing the total number of provinces with completed vote recapitulation to 27 out of 34. On Friday, the KPU is scheduled to complete recapitulations for South Sulawesi, Jakarta and West Papua.
Based on KPU data of the 27 provinces with completed vote recapitulation, the JokoWidodo-Ma’ruf Amin pair gained 70.32 million votes (55.60 percent) against PrabowoSubianto-Sandiaga Uno’s 56.17 million votes (44.40 percent).
However, as of Thursday afternoon, the regional KPUs of Jakarta, Papua and North Sumatra had yet to complete their provincial-level recapitulation. This was despite the deadline for provincial-level recapitulation having been delayed from May 12 to May 15. Meanwhile, the deadline for the national vote recapitulation is May 22, or 35 days after voting day. If no complaints are filed with the Constitutional Court, the KPU will declare the president- and vice president-elect on May 25.
KPU chair AriefBudiman said the regions that had yet to complete their recapitulation had reported the latest updates to the KPU. Arief said that provincial-level KPUs should complete their recapitulations by May 18 at the latest. (REK/INK)