Invalid votes reach 8.5%

Invalid votes reach 8.5%

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The General Elections Commission (KPU) closed its vote tabulation
center on Monday due to a shortage of finances, with an average
8.5 percent of invalid votes recorded.

Chairman of KPU IT team Akhiar Oemry said the highest number
of invalid votes was found in the election of the Regional
Representatives Council (DPD) members, which saw 12 million or
12.5 percent of 96.8 million votes counted declared ineligible.

The lowest number of invalid votes was recorded in the
election of regental/municipal legislature members with 6.29
million or 6.7 percent of 93.29 percent counted.

Invalid votes in the election of House of Representatives
members stood at 6.69 million votes, or 6.8 percent of 97.96
million votes counted.

"Invalid votes include ballot papers which were perforated
outside the proper section, pierced twice or where only the names
of legislative aspirants were pierced," Oemry told reporters.

For the election of the provincial legislature members,
invalid votes reached 7.92 million or 8 percent of 97.58 votes
counted as of Monday.

A number of surveys conducted before the legislative election
on April 5 revealed that many people were not informed about how
to vote, which showed that KPU efforts to disseminate information
regarding the elections were lacking.

The KPU has admitted its failure in the area of voter
education.

Despite the closure of the vote tabulation center, the KPU IT
team will continue the computerized vote counting, which can be
viewed at its website tnp.kpu.go.id.

Oemry said so far 447,140 of 585,337 polling stations had sent
their manual ballot counting results to the KPU IT team.

The KPU, he added, could not estimate the voter turnout as the
ballot counting was still in process. KPU deputy chairman Ramlan
Surbakti said he anticipated the voter turnout this year would be
lower than the 1999 election.

Oemry said the highest data transmission came from Yogyakarta
with 9,060 polling stations, or 98 percent of 9,245 polling
stations in the city.

By contrast, Maluku had only transmitted data from 24 polling
stations or 0.39 percent of the total 6,038 polling stations,
making the province with the least counted ballots reported to
the KPU in Jakarta.

Ramlan said the commission could not meet its target of
tabulating all election results from the regional KPUDs by April
21.

He said the local KPU in Mentawai, East Seram and West
Southeast Maluku, had told the KPU that they could not meet the
deadline due to transportation problems.

"There is not sufficient gasoline for the available airplanes
in the regencies to fly the ballots counted," Ramlan said, adding
that the KPU would ask for help from the Indonesian Military
(TNI).

Ramlan, speaking after a meeting in the Constitutional Court,
said that the KPU was consulting the court over possible disputes
over election results.

"We told them that we will only issue the results of votes
garnered by the political parties and members of the regional
representatives councils (DPD). We will not announce the
confirmed number of seats they (the political parties) have
garnered," he said.

The KPU, Ramlan said, would still try to complete the ballot
counting by April 25 at the latest.

Based on KPU instruction No. 636/2004, which revised KPU
instruction No. 100/2003 on the timetable for the legislative
election, the KPU plans to announce the results of the
legislative election on April 28 at the latest.