KPU launches computerized vote counting
KPU launches computerized vote counting
M. Taufiqurrahman
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
A new-and-improved computerized vote counting system was ready
for the presidential election and would help to reduce vote-
rigging in the poll, the General Elections Commission (KPU)
announced on Sunday.
As in the legislative election and the first round of the
presidential election, the computerized vote counting will
provide the public with updates from polling stations nationwide.
KPU chairman Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin said although the
computerized vote counting was not official, it would provide a
useful comparison to the results of the manual vote-counting.
"The manual aggregation of the votes will take a long time to
complete, and the computerized system will help voters learn
about the results early on," Nazaruddin said at the launch of the
system here.
The incumbent, President Megawati Soekarnoputri, and her
challenger, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, are contesting the
country's first-ever direct presidential election.
As part of efforts to prevent vote-rigging, both camps have
pledged to deploy one million observers each to over 580,000
poll stations across the country.
Nazaruddin said the transparent system meant voters would
know if there was a wide discrepancy between the computerized and
the manual vote counts.
He said the computerized count could also serve to diffuse
tensions during the post-election period, when voters were
anxious to know about the election results.
KPU head of computerized vote counting Chusnul Mar'iyah said
data from polling stations would start to stream into the KPU
data center, set up at the Borobudur Hotel, Central Jakarta, on
Monday afternoon.
The data center, which will feed information about the count
to the media, will operate until Sept. 25.
The computerized vote counting requires over 12,000 data entry
operators who will enter data provided by subdistrict election
officials after it is collected from polling stations.
The data should reach the KPU at a quicker pace than in
previous polls, as it will directly feed into the data center,
by-passing the commission's now-redundant bureaucracy.
The KPU has allotted Rp 9 billion (US$1 million) to
accommodate the data entry staff during the tabulation process.
Chusnul said earlier the latest system would be more resistant
to possible attacks from hackers, who had broken into the data in
previous elections.
The House of Representatives (DPR) budgetary committee has
rejected the Rp 40 billion budget for the computerized vote
counting in the runoff and demanded an audit of the system.
The committee suspected there had been mark-ups in the price
of the system's hardware.