Ballot counting contines, despite glitches

Ballot counting contines, despite glitches

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

When the data appeared on Wednesday morning, not just the public
were shocked but also the General Elections Commission (KPU). At
around 9 a.m, a local TV network suddenly showed some 70 million
votes counted for several minutes, but then returned to 4.9
million.

According to Achiar Oemry of the KPU IT department, the
problem was caused by the TV network's own mistake, there was
never such a number at the KPU.

More surprising figures appeared on the screens shortly before
President Megawati Soekarnoputri arrived in the afternoon at the
IT ballot counting center at the Borobodur Hotel in Central
Jakarta.

As of midday on Wednesday, the total number of counted votes
still stood at 4.99 million, but two hours later, just before
President Megawati arrived, the number of votes counted suddenly
jumped to 18.29 million.

Early in the morning, Golkar still led the tally with 1.25
million votes, followed by the Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle (PDI-P) with 841,705 votes.

But just before Megawati's arrival, her PDI-P party's votes
had reached 3.74 million, with Golkar in second place with 3.64
million votes.

Oemry added that the ballot count using the information
technology (IT) infrastructure had not run perfectly due to slow
data entry and verification at the district level.

He insisted that most of the district election committees
preferred to collect all the polling station data from their
districts before sending it on to the KPU data center in Jakarta.

"That's why the count has been very slow over the first two
days -- April 5 and April 6. But since Tuesday at midnight, the
district committees have been sending all their data to us so
that the count has been progressing quite quickly today," he told
reporters.

On Tuesday night, the total number of counted ballots
displayed by the KPU's IT system had reached 2.9 million votes.

As of 11 p.m. on Wednesday the total number of votes counted
had reached over 27 million.

Oemry estimated that the flow of data from district committees
across the country would reach its peak over the next few days.

According to Oemry, verification, which is carried out
directly by the KPU server, would detect whether data had been
sent more the once. After the data had been verified, the KPU
data center would feed it to the IT system in the Borobudur
Hotel, the KPU's website -- kpu.go.id -- and television stations.

"I hope the electronic counting will be completed as quickly
as possible now that the district committees are all sending
their data to us," he said without specifying a timetable.

The KPU repeatedly said that the count was expected to end
nine hours after the first data transmission from the district
committees, with each district committee being expected to send
the results from 10 polling stations every hour.

These were not the only difficulties that affected the
electronic ballot count over the last two days.

On Tuesday evening, the figures displayed by kpu.go.id and
television stations suddenly switched to zero from around 2
million.

Oemry said that the KPU had deliberately stopped feeding the
data to the public and television stations as the data, which is
provided free, was being sold by television stations to other
users.

"This is unfair to the public and to us as all the data should
be free -- not for sale," he said.