Some ballots spoiled, some found in Deli river

JAKARTA (JP): Thousands of the more than 550,000 ballots received by the Blora regency elections committee in East Java were faulty, while six bags of ballots were found at the bottom of the Deli River in Labuhan Batu, North Sumatra.

Blora regency elections official Slamet Wiryanto was quoted by Antara as saying that up to 30 ballots from each pack of 500 ballots were flawed and could not be used for voting. In Bogorejo district, for example, 300 of the 5,000 ballots received by local officials had to be discarded.

The flaws included missing pictures and missing details of polling stations.

"Those ballots cannot be used," Slamet said, adding that his office had enough extra ballots to replace the some 33,000 damaged ones. There are 492,775 registered voters in the regency, while officials received 588,968 ballots.

Slamet said there would be 1,190 polling stations in the 16 districts and 295 villages in Blora.

From Medan, Antara reported a group of children found six bags of ballots in the Deli River.

An official with the Medan elections committee, Ali Musa Hutagalung, said the ballots were not meant for Medan.

"They were supposed to be delivered to Tanah Karo regency," Hutagalung said.

As of Friday midnight, no elections officials had come forward to claim the ballots.

The incidents in Blora and Medan were only two of a number of glitches encountered in elections preparations. In Bengkulu, the Independent Election Monitoring Committee uncovered voters who had registered more than once in Muko-Muko Selatan village, North Bengkulu.

The elections supervisory committee in Pekalongan, Central Java, found 11 of the 30 political parties registered in the regency had committed various violations in the first two days of campaigning, Antara said.

The violators included the Democratic People's Party (PRD), the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle and the United Development Party (PPP). (swe)