Verification of eligible voters

JAKARTA: The General Elections Commission (KPU) and the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) have started working to verify data from national and compare that to the data for eligible voters.

KPU deputy chairman Ramlan Surbakti said on Thursday that the verification process began on Oct. 1 and will end on Nov. 15.

The census, according to Ramlan, would enable BPS and KPU to check whether or not all eligible people in the country had been registered as voters.

Eligible voters are all Indonesian citizens who have proper documentation and identification and have reached the age of 17 or have been married.

According to Ramlan, BPS officials would not conduct the verification door-to-door, but by checking existing data with local leaders such as neighborhood heads and village chiefs.

KPU member Valina Singka Subakti said her office would secure advertising space about the verification of the census on four television stations in the country: TVRI, SCTV, RCTI and MTV, as well as a number of radio stations.

Based on the population and eligible voters census, the country's population stood at about 214.5 million, while the eligible voters for the 2004 elections reached about 142 million people. -- JP