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.