Febriamy Hutapea – If the legislative election scheduled for April 9 were held today, more than 50 percent of the votes cast would be declared invalid because Indonesians do not know how to mark the ballot papers correctly, a survey from an international election assistance organization shows.

The news is the latest blow to the embattled General Elections Comission, or KPU, which is struggling to meet preparation deadlines and inform the public about the upcoming elections.

In a voting simulation exercise involving 200 people in Jakarta from Dec. 11-13, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems said 51 percent of the respondents still used marks other than a tick or a hole punch to select their preferred political party or candidate.

"We want the KPU to address this issue so that no matter kind of mark made by the voter, as long as it clearly shows the intention of the voter to select their preferred political party or candidate, the vote should be valid," Adam Schmidt, IFES country director for Indonesia, said on Thursday.

"Indonesia should be prepared to rectify this situation. A more complicated electoral system may be prone to errors and we don't want the number of invalid ballots to climb higher in the forthcoming election," Adam said.

In the 2004 legislative elections, voters used a nail to punch a hole in the ballot paper. In the wake of criticisms and confusion over how voters were to select their parties and candidates, the KPU recently adopted new regulations that allowed voters to use either a tick or a nail to mark their preferred party or candidate.

Schmidt said it made sense to review the restrictive procedure, which meant that voters could not use other marks to indicate their preference.

The government said last week that it was still drafting a government regulation aimed at minimizing invalid voting.