Yusril Proposes Consolidating Political Party Votes at the End of the Election to Prevent Wastage

Yusril Ihza Mahendra, the Coordinating Minister for Law, Human Rights, Immigration and Corrections, has proposed consolidating political party votes at the end of the electoral process as a solution to prevent vote wastage and to push for a simplification of the party system.

“I think the most practical approach would be to implement this if party consolidation occurs at the end of the election. If it happens at the outset, you cannot calculate how many seats will be obtained,” Yusril said in Jakarta on Tuesday, 3 March 2026, according to Antara.

Yusril said the system would give opportunities to parties that do not meet a certain threshold or have insufficient seats to form a faction, to cooperate with other parties to join after the election results are determined.

The constitutional law expert gave an example: if two parties each obtain seven seats, they could merge so as to meet the requirement to form a faction in the DPR (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat).

“Rather than votes going to waste, they would agree to merge; once they have reached 13 seats, they could form a faction and enter the DPR,” he said.

He also noted that such a merger could yield a significant new political force. In fact, according to Yusril, it is not impossible that a merger of non-parliamentary parties could surpass the performance of large parties.

The consolidation would take place at the stage of faction formation, not during the initial vote tally.

He also argued that the mechanism would steer the party ecosystem toward a simplification of political parties. Parties that were initially non-parliamentary could unite and, with a significant vote base, potentially merge into a stronger political force.

Reportedly, the House of Representatives is preparing amendments to the Electoral Law, one of which will address the parliamentary threshold.

As in previous elections, the issue of the threshold is debated, with some parties seeking to maintain or raise the threshold and others seeking to lower it or abolish it.

Law Number 7 of 2017 on Elections sets the parliamentary threshold at 4 percent, but many parties say the figure is too high. After all, many votes secured by political parties end up wasted and cannot be translated into DPR seats because they fail to cross the threshold.