RI will not use electronic voting machines: KPU
Veeramalla Anjaiah, The Jakarta Post/ Jakarta
Indonesia -- the third largest democratic nation in the world -- will not use electronic voting machines in the near future, as the machines are costly and not suited to the situation here, the General Elections Commission (KPU) chief said on Wednesday.
"Each voting machine costs around US$3,000. We have around 600,000 polling stations ... We have neither the funds nor the resources to use electronic voting machines in our elections. They are not suitable for our country as the situation is different, and people still trust the manual election process," commission chairman Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin said in Washington, during a live video conference held at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
Nazaruddin is leading a small delegation to Washington to observe the 2004 U.S. election, in which electronic voting machines were used on Tuesday. Earlier, India and Brazil used electronic voting machines in their elections.
The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta organized the conference on Wednesday, in which around 70 Indonesian journalists, officials and academics took part.
While responding to a question on the major differences between the U.S. and Indonesian election systems, Nazaruddin said the Indonesian election system was centralized, while the system in the U.S. was more decentralized.
"The U.S. election system can't be implemented in Indonesia. We have neither the technology nor the human resources to follow the American model, which is well-organized. Election authorities in the U.S. have enormous funds to conduct elections, whereas, we in Indonesia do not have funds of that size".
In response to a question from The Jakarta Post on possible cooperation between the U.S. election team and the Indonesian elections commission, Nazaruddin hinted that there would be some kind of cooperation in the future.
"Not now. We came here just to observe how the U.S. election was held, and compare it with Indonesia's. The U.S. election officials are very busy. But, in the future, we would like to have some kind of cooperation between the two organizations," Nazaruddin said.
Nazaruddin and his team members admired the way the election was organized in the U.S.
"We noted there were two major aspects of the election that contributed to its success. The management skills of the U.S. elections team -- which introduced an early voting process to avoid trouble -- and the application of modern technology," he said.
"Even the way they recruited election officials, who are highly qualified for their jobs, is worth considering. We learned a lot from the U.S. election to improve the quality of our own elections in the future, Valina Singka, a member of Nazaruddin's team, said.
Unlike in several other Asian countries, where U.S. embassies had organized "red-white-and-blue" parties to observe the U.S. election, the embassy in Jakarta organized only the "U.S. Election Watch - 2004" program.
"Keeping in mind that it is the holy month of Ramadhan, we didn't organize any other program," M. Max Kwak, the embassy's new press attache told the Post on the sidelines of the video conference.