Nani Afrida, Banda Aceh – Aceh's first-ever direct elections are scheduled for December, yet many eligible voters may be unable to cast ballots because they have not registered.
Provincial capital Banda Aceh is home to the highest number of eligible voters for next month's elections, which will see races for governor, regents and mayors, but only about 60 percent have registered, according to data collected by Jurdil Aceh, a provincial election monitoring network.
An official with Jurdil Aceh, T. Ardiansyah, said Friday that 479 volunteers had been deployed to 384 villages in 21 regencies/cities to gather information on the registration of voters. He said 6,834 people were interviewed by the volunteers.
Ardiansyah said in Banda Aceh, the main problem with registering voters was that many were not at home when registration officials came to their houses. "But there are also many people who are apathetic and indifferent about the election. They just don't care," he said.
He said his network also found many people in the province were unaware of whether or not they had already been registered to vote. "Even the head of the Independent Aceh Election Commission (KIP), Jafar, is not aware whether or not he has been registered," Ardiansyah said.
Even though in Banda Aceh up to 40 percent of eligible voters have not been registered, Jurdil Aceh said that overall up to 86.9 percent of eligible voters across the province were registered. "This shows that the elections organizing committee is meeting the people's right to vote," he said.
However, he acknowledged obstacles remained to ensuring the elections were a success, including ghost voters and possible disputes over the results.
Mahdi Syahbandar, the head of a voter registration working group, said the KIP should look into Jurdil's findings. "We will ask KIP representatives at the regency level to follow up on the findings. We still have time before the Nov. 8 deadline to register voters," he said.
The KIP is still verifying that all candidates in the elections have met administrative requirements. This process is expected to be completed Monday, with an announcement of the official list of candidates.
Eleven candidates registered with the KIP, but three have been dropped because they failed a mandatory test on reciting the Koran.