To vote or not to vote:

To vote or not to vote:
Participation in the 2004 Legislative and Presidential Elections

Muhammad Qodari
Jakarta

During the presidential election a few days ago, we witnessed
something that we had never seen previously. In a number of
polling stations across the country, the polling station
committees put on lucky draws for the voters who showed up at the
polling stations. A variety of prizes were on offer, ranging from
TV sets to goats.

The media reported that polling station committees organized
these lucky draws to attract the voters. Maybe the committees
assumed that the relatively low turnout by the voters during the
legislative elections on April 5 meant that the voters would have
little interest in the presidential election.

The committees were correct in their belief that the turnout
in the last legislative election was among the lowest in the
electoral history in this country. Let's forget the figures for
the New Order's seven elections as they were the result of a high
degree of voter coercion. However, compared to the 1999 election
-- which was the first democratic election after the Soeharto era
-- voter turnout in 2004 was indeed poor.

In 1999, of the 118 million registered voters, 92.7 percent
cast their ballots. In 2004, of 148 million registered voters,
only 124.4 million, or 84 percent, showed up at the polling
stations. There is some debate as to why 23.6 million registered
voters, or 16 percent, declined to exercise their constitutional
rights.

Those advocating abstentionism have been quick to claim that
the lower turnout reflects the revival of abstentionism.
Abstentionism here refers to people who choose not to vote
because they do not believe in the political system, government
or the political parties and politicians. The pro-abstention
people even go so far as to declare 2004 as the year of victory
for abstentionism as the combined percentage of abstainers and
those who spoiled their ballots reached 23.3 percent. As we know,
the Golkar Party, the winner of legislative elections, only
secured 21.6 percent of the votes.

Of course, the pro-abstention activists are mistaken. Most of
those who did not show up at the polling stations did, in fact,
want to vote. Surveys conducted by the Indonesian Survey
Institute (LSI) and International Foundation for Electoral
Systems (IFES) prior to the legislative elections all showed a
consistently high willingness to participate in the election --
around 96-97 percent.

The reason why many people failed to show up on polling day
was because they had not received voter cards or confirmation
letters from the local election administrators. They simply
thought that if they came to the polling stations, they would not
be allowed to vote. Lack of voter cards and confirmation letters
was a major problem the national election committee (KPU) failed
to tackle properly.

Abstention activists were also wrong to include spoiled votes
within the abstention category. While it is possible that many
abstainers showed up to vote but deliberately spoiled their
ballots, it is nevertheless logical to assume that the number of
these was insignificant. For an abstainer, it does not make sense
for him to come to the polling station and deliberately spoil his
ballot when he can simply avoid the inconvenience by staying at
home.

The majority of invalid votes in the last legislative
elections were most likely due to the fact that the voting method
was much more complicated that in previous elections. In the
past, all the voter had to do was to choose and perforate a party
symbol. Now, apart from perforating the party symbol, the voters
are also required to perforate a particular candidate from the
list offered by the party. Only perforating the candidate, or
perforating a candidate from a different party, will invalidate
the ballot. This resulted in a significant number of invalid
votes, with the actual percentage being 8.8 percent.

To the surprise of many, the number of "invalid" votes in the
presidential election appears to have been slightly higher than
in the legislative elections. The official number has not yet
been announced by the KPU as ballot counting is still continuing.
However, monitoring groups (the NDI and LP3ES), say that the
average number of invalid votes was 9.1 percent. These invalid
votes were mainly due to the unintentional making of double
perforations by the voters. Later, the KPU announced that such
votes would not longer be considered as invalid. So, it could
turn out that the real number of spoiled ballots in the
presidential election will be very low.

As the ballot count is not yet finished, the official voter
turnout is not yet available. Surveys by the LSI and IFES prior
to the presidential election showed that public enthusiasm for
the country's first direct presidential election was slightly
higher than the legislative election -- 98 percent according to
the LSI survey of June 20-24. Provided that the KPU has managed
to improve the mechanism for distributing voter cards and
confirmation letters, the high rate of non-participation recorded
during the legislative elections will not be repeated.

In a TV interview on Wednesday afternoon, former U.S.
president Jimmy Carter, who heads a group of foreign election
observers, said that the turnout on July 5 was around 85 percent
-- double the sort of levels normally recorded in the U.S.
Indeed, despite administrative problems with voter registration,
Indonesia is still a country with one of the highest voter
turnout rates in the world.

The question is, why are Indonesians so enthusiastic about
voting? We included a question in our survey asking people why
they wanted to participate in the election. In the case of the
legislative elections, the two dominant answers were that voting
was a citizen's obligation and that it was a citizen's right. In
the case of the presidential election, another reason was
adduced, namely, the responsibility of choosing the nation's
leader.

These responses are interesting. Reason number three is good
but reason number one is rather worrisome. This is because people
who vote due to a perceived obligation tend to be less critical
regarding which parties or which presidential candidates they
will vote for.

During the 30 years of New Order authoritarian rule, voting
was never obligated by law. However people were virtually coerced
into voting by the bureaucracy and the Army. The latter also
intervened greatly in the electoral process, from telling people
whom to vote for to manipulating the ballot count. This has left
a unfortunate legacy for Indonesian voters both now and in the
future -- a legacy that Indonesians must strive to fight against
using continuous civic education.

The writer is Director of Research at the Indonesian Survey
Institute (LSI).