Slow ballot counting

In addition to the frequent explanation given in the media about the slow ballot counting by the General Elections Commission, which uses a computer network system with a centralized and closed architecture, the following explanation needs to be mentioned:

1. The reason for the tardiness in vote counting is the manual path from, respectively, the polls station (TPS), to the local elections committee (PPS), from the PPS to the subdistrict elections committee (PPK), from the PPK to the district/mayoralty elections committee (PPD II), where the data is fed into a computer terminal.

2. In the latest concept of information system design, it is necessary to distinguish the flow of information and the flow of control or the flow of validation. These two flows, depending on the context, may constitute one path or separate ones.

3. In vote counting, in which accuracy and high speed are very much expected while tardiness is, theoretically, often identical with decreasing accuracy, the flow of information should be separated from the flow of validation.

4. What has been made a scapegoat in point 1 above should be the flow of control or the flow of validation, while the flow of information can always be separated by providing a TPS with a cellular phone or an SSB radio; or in the absence of these telecommunications devices, by making use of the closest telecommunications nodes such as a local telecommunications stall (Wartel) (of which there about 80,000), or mobile or stationary postal outlets (about 27,000), etc., so that one second after the counting of ballot papers at each TPS has been completed, the result can be reported to the PPS. In this way, the possibility of manipulation in vote counting by state apparatuses may be minimized because the witnesses, the monitoring personnel and the local community are still present when the result is reported to the PPS.

5. Separate paths will enable mutual checking between these two paths. In addition, the flow of information will usually be faster and more accurate because the participation of the local community is still intense, the source of primary data and the data are still fresh and are unlikely to be manipulated, while the use of different tabulation forms may lead to a deliberate or inadvertent error.

Around March 1999, we, of the National Coordination Office of Popular Economic Posts (PER), along with our colleagues from the Community Concerned Over Elections (Mapelu), made an offer that the network of the community of PER, made up, among others, by the Wasantara-Net network, which covers 107 cities from Aceh to Irian Jaya plus 27,000 mobile and stationary outlets, the Telkom Multimedia network, which reaches 12 cities with 1,140 ports, the Bukopin Swamitra network, which goes down to subdistrict in rural areas, BRI, BNI, BTPN, the network of some 80,000 Wartel and 2,500 PER nodes, of which about 500 nodes are e-mail-connected, could participate in vote counting.

At that time, our delegation was received by Adnan Buyung Nasution, accompanied by, among others, Hendra Dharsono, who is responsible for the vote counting information system. Dharsono told us then that UNDP could not accept a new proposal because the fund allocated for the information system was very limited and that new participation was always possible on condition that the fund was made available by the aspiring new participant.

In the meantime, through a number of colleagues, who represent a number of political parties, we have also suggested that vote counting monitoring should be conducted both in the manual path and in the electronic expertise path. It is always likely that a computer expert will move the votes given to a particular party to another party through a simple programming algorithm which is made to look complicated. This is usually known as "computer fraud".

JUSTIANI

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