Flawed voter data inflated level of abstention: KPU

Flawed voter data inflated level of abstention: KPU

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The General Elections Commission (KPU) blamed on Tuesday the
steady increase in the number of people who abstained from voting
on flawed data on voters.

The result of the KPU national vote tabulation has shown that
over 35 million of 153 million registered voters did not cast
their votes in the Sept. 20 presidential election runoff. The
figure was up from 32 million abstainers in the July 5
presidential election and 23.5 million voters who did not turn up
at designated polling stations in the April 5 legislative
election.

KPU deputy chairman Ramlan Surbakti said on Tuesday that the
actual number of abstainers in the runoff was lower than
estimated.

"According to our estimates, the (abstention) figure was only
around 33 million as there were over 1.6 million voters who did
not cast their votes at their designated polling stations but
voted elsewhere," Ramlan said.

More than 116 million people voted in the runoff to choose
between Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Megawati Soekarnoputri.

KPU also found that invalid ballots reached 2.6 million.

Susilo was declared the election winner on Monday, with 60.62
percent of the vote against Megawati's 39.38 percent.

Ramlan said the total of those who registered for the Sept. 20
election was probably only 150.6 million.

"However, I suspect the actual figure is lower than that," he
said.

He said inconsistencies in the figures could indicate that
voter registration had failed to curb the presence of "ghost"
voters, or fictitious voters.

The KPU earlier estimated that the number of fictitious voters
could reach five million, but poll committees at the village
level managed to uncover and remove 1.4 million.

Ramlan said there were a variety of reasons for voters
abstention.

"Some voters did not vote because their chosen candidate was
eliminated in the first round of the election," he said.

He also said there were a large number of voters who did not
make it to a polling station as they were away from home.

"Election day fell on a Monday and was therefore preceded by a
weekend," he said.

KPU chairman Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin earlier said that compared
to other democracies, turnout was quite good, as voting was not
compulsory in the country.