Will legislators vote for electronic system?

JAKARTA (JP): In modern democracies, voting has become the ultimate expression of choice.

After years of heeding the process of "consultation and consensus", members of the reinvigorated People's Consultative Assembly and House of Representatives have taken to the voting process like fish to water.

Article 79 of the Assembly's internal rules still appeals for consensus "whenever possible", but concedes that voting is acceptable.

According to the Assembly Secretariat, there are two types of votes: open and closed.

The two are similar, the only difference being that in a closed vote there are a few precautionary measures taken to ensure no one knows who voted what.

For an open vote, there are three methods which can be employed.

The first is electronically through devices installed on the Assembly members's desks in the plenary hall. The secretariat proudly calls the system the Digital Congress Network.

The small black devices have five buttons which Assembly members can select. If the vote requires a simple "yes" or "no", the legislators merely have to push the first button to vote "yes", the second to vote "no" and the third to abstain.

For those votes which have alternatives to "yes", "no", "abstain", legislators merely press the button which corresponds to the proposed alternative they wish to vote for.

The speaker of the session give members two minutes to vote. During that time they can press all the buttons they wish to and only their final selection will be counted.

The final tally is automatically computed and displayed on a giant screen inside the Assembly hall.

The second way to conduct an open vote is to simply have Assembly members stand up and raise their hands to cast their vote.

The third way is to use ballot boxes.

The difference in a closed vote using the Digital Congress Network is that Assembly members are provided with a small black cloth to cover their hands and voting devices, so no one is able to see which button they push.

In a closed vote using ballot boxes, a small booth is provided for Assembly members to ensure their privacy. This was the system which was employed during the Assembly's October session.

At that time, Assembly members were suspicious of the Digital Congress Network and chose to avoid it, despite the fact that it would have been far swifter and more practical than the conventional method of going forward one-by-one to vote, a process which takes over two hours.

There is no exact calculation of the cost of the electronic consoles, installed last year but officials said with the consoles only functioning as microphones, the hundreds of million of rupiah spent on the system have not been fully utilized.

For the current Annual Session, the Assembly Secretariat has again made preparations for the maiden use of the devices.

An expert staff at the secretariat, Janedjri, expects Assembly members may be more open now to voting electronically.

"There will be a 30-minute drill to train everyone if the session decides to use the electronic device, so every legislator will be really familiar with it. We also moved the main computer to the plenary hall so they can see for themselves how the computers work," Janedri told The Jakarta Post here on Tuesday.

He expects votes using the electronic devices can be tallied in five minutes, and everyone will be able to see the process on the giant computer screens.

One rather glaring weakness of the electronic voting system is that officials cannot block or turn off the voting consoles at desks of absent Assembly members, thus technically anyone can use these vacant consoles to vote twice.

"We will have to spread around our officers to watch the unused consoles because people can use them and jeopardize the vote count," Janedjri said. (dja)