Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – A week away from its Oct. 24 deadline to announce the final list of eligible voters, the General Elections Commission (KPU) has yet to finish updating voters' data from its regional branches.
As of Saturday, the KPU listed 169 million people eligible to cast their votes in the April 9, 2009, legislative elections.
"We are still waiting for the updated list of voters from East Kalimantan, South Sumatra, North Maluku and West Papua provinces. We're also waiting for the latest data on voters living overseas," Sri Nuryanti, the KPU member dealing with the registration of voters, said Saturday.
"However, I estimate the total number of voters will be close to 169 million."
Sri had just completed a one-day meeting with staff from regional elections commissions (KPUD) from 17 provinces.
Hours before Sri briefed the press, KPU chairman Abdul Hafiz Anshary had said the number of eligible voters would be around 171 million – a 2 million difference from Sri's.
The KPU had announced in September that the preliminary list of voters had reached 172 million. The figure was a slight decrease from the previous estimate of 174 million.
Abdul said the continued decline in total voters was due to problems faced by KPUDs and the delay in updating the list from overseas.
"There are misperceptions among the KPUDs in the registration process. Some KPUDs have also miscalculated the number of eligible voters," he said.
He added that the Yogyakarta KPUD had refused to enlist about 8,000 students who had failed to show ID cards issued by the Yogyakarta administration even though they did have ID cards issued by their respective hometowns' administrations.
"It also happened in Batam, where newcomers are unregistered as they don't have local ID cards yet. We have asked the KPUDs in Yogyakarta and Batam to register those people," he said.
Abdul highlighted another problem as Central Java KPUD had submitted an unverified list which had been used in recent local elections.
The 2008 law on legislative elections requires the KPU to update population data from the government to obtain the final voter list.
Abdul said the KPU had yet to receive the latest data on eligible voters living overseas.
"We have estimated there are about 1.6 million eligible voters living abroad," he said.
The KPU blamed the slow budget disbursement from the government as the main reason for failing to update the overseas list.
"We have decided to extend the deadline to Nov. 20 to enable our embassies overseas to submit the verified voters," he said.
The KPU plans to set up polling stations in 117 countries to enable Indonesians to vote.
"We will also create mobile polling stations, primarily in Kuala Lumpur, to reach Indonesian voters who work on plantations and as housemaids," Abdul said.