Jakarta/Bandung/Yogyakarta – The electronic but slow vote counting finally came to an end after almost two weeks on Monday, as the General Elections Commission (KPU) races against time to complete the counting of paper ballots from the April 9 legislative elections.
Only 13 million out of approximately 170 million votes were counted as the KPU moved vote counting to its office, after spending Rp 30 billion (US$2.8 million) on scanner technology to provide online vote tabulation capabilities, Rp 18 billion on communications – not to mention the rental fee for a spacious room at the five-star Borobudur Hotel in Central Jakarta.
Not even the members of the poll body are happy with the computerized vote counting process. Sri Nuryanti, the KPU member overseeing fixed voter list, said the commission was considering stopping use of the electronic system.
"We should conduct a thorough evaluation toward the whole system as to avoid the same problem from happening in the presidential election," she said.
She acknowledged the problems rested mostly with the data synchronization process.
"Unlike in the 2004 election, when the KPU brought the whole electronic system to regional branches, this time around we only endorsed it and left the rest to the regional branches. In other words, we cannot control them," she said.
Problems with scanner machines used to transfer data during the synchronization process exacerbated problems. Poll observers said the slow vote count only confirmed the KPU's managerial flaws, following the voter list brouhaha.
"The KPU had better hire more people to enter the manual data. This offers us more certainty than the technology the KPU is using right now," Hadar Gumay of the Centre for Electoral Reform (Cetro), said.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered Home Minister Mardiyanto to grill the KPU over its slow counting. Yudhoyono said the government was ready to help the KPU finish the count on time.
"I've been following news that the KPU, despite its use of an electronic system, has been seen as doing the count slowly. Some even said the manual count would have been faster," Yudhoyono said after opening a Cabinet meeting on elections at the Presidential Office.
"Therefore I've asked the home minister to establish communications with the KPU in this regard, and to ask for an explanation whether the KPU can comply with the set timetable. It should be able to." In Bandung, representatives from 21 political parties in West Java walked out from a plenary meeting to endorse manual vote counting at the local KPU. The group threatened not to sign the election results as they suspect a significant disparity between actual and official results.
"To us the general election only represents the will of big political parties," Asep Dariadi, a spokesman for the group, said.
The vote count shows the Democratic Party finished first in Bandung with 442,769 votes, followed by the Prosperous Justice Party, which collected 185,596 votes.
Meanwhile in Bantul, Yogyakarta, the local elections commission failed to announce the results of vote counting after data files from all districts were corrupted by a virus.