Jakarta – The website KawalPemilu.org has officially invited the campaign teams of incumbent Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and Gerindra Party chairman Prabowo Subianto to use its platform to monitor the vote counting process on election day.
The website, established by a community of volunteers working together with election watchdog Network for Democracy and Electoral Integrity (Netgrit), will gather photos of actual C1 vote tally forms. The forms record the final vote count of each polling station, from all stations and subdistricts across the country.
KawalPemilu founder Ainun Najib, an Indonesian information and technology expert residing in Singapore, extended the offer through a letter on Wednesday, inviting both campaigns to use the website as a back-up to record the vote tally documents from each polling station.
"KawalPemilu is neutral, independent, open and only sides with the data," Ainun said in the letter.
He argued that the involvement of polling witnesses from both the Jokowi and Prabowo campaign teams on the KawalPemilu platform would improve KawalPemilu's independence.
"At the same time, the involvement of both candidates would also show the Indonesian people, who are currently divided, that everyone wants a healthy competition and a clean, peaceful, and transparent election," he further said.
KawalPemilu.org is a crowdsourcing project run by a number of netizens, mostly experts in IT. It was first launched for the 2014 presidential race to safeguard transparency in the competition between then-candidates Jokowi and Prabowo.
Jokowi-Ma'ruf campaign team member and National Awakening Party (PKB) politician Lukman Edy said that Jokowi polling witnesses would be encouraged to upload photos of the C1 forms to KawalPemilu on a voluntary basis.
"Internally, we also have our own IT system," he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Prabowo-Sandiaga Uno campaign team spokesperson Miftah Nur Sabri said Prabowo polling witnesses would be encouraged to do the same.
"The system that Ainun has built is very good," Miftah said on a talkshow on KompasTV on Wednesday. "I think both [Jokowi and Prabowo camps] can support people's participation in ensuring that the election process is transparent." (kmt)