Election issue
The idea of holding digital elections is picking up steam in Indonesia following reports that dozens of election workers died of extreme fatigue during and after organising the nation’s first-ever concurrent polls, billed by many as ‘the world’s most complex’.
JAKARTA: The idea of holding digital elections is picking up steam following reports that dozens of election workers died of reported extreme fatigue during and after organising the nation’s first-ever concurrent elections, billed by many as “the world’s most complex”.
While it is hard to determine if the April 17 general elections directly caused the deaths, a consensus has been reached that the current election system – in which five different paperbased elections are held on a single day – has to be changed. One of the proposed changes is for Indonesia to apply eVoting to make elections less complicated.
The proposal, however, remains controversial, with lawmakers saying that even after so many election-related deaths, eVoting still seems like a distant dream.
The controversy revolves around the question of whether Indonesia – an archipelago with a population of more than 250 million people – is ready for eVoting and whether the technology is the right solution to election problems.
Lawmakers, election organisers, election observers and election engineers have given different answers.
House of Representatives speaker Bambang Soesatyo has called on members of the House Commission II overseeing home affairs to consider eVoting in a revision to the 2017 Election Law.
The commission, however, said it was unlikely that eVoting would be used in 2024. Indonesian voters, particularly those living in remote and underdeveloped areas with no Internet connection, are not ready for digital elections, said commission chairman and Golkar Party lawmaker Zainuddin Amali.
General Elections Commission (KPU) Arief Budiman previously said that the lack of infrastructure in some areas would hinder the application of eVoting.
“If data from one polling station could not be included in the national vote tally, the KPU could not determine the election results,” he said as quoted by online news portal detik.com.
He added that eVoting machines would also be costly. One polling station, he said, might need at least five eVoting machines, including two backups, while some 800,000 polling stations were involved in the last elections.
The KPU has proposed that Indonesia use digital technology to count, not cast, the ballots.
“The counting process is where most problems occur.
“The officers become exhausted from counting, not serving the voters at polling stations,” said KPU commissioner Viryan Azis.