Supriyanto Thursday 10-04-2014 10:08:00 Vote counting manipulation is always a core concern in every election. This suspicion stemmed from New Orders electoral practice where fairness and honesty had been abandoned. Meanwhile, in elections after the fall of New Order (post-1998), the 2009 General Election was where most error in vote counting occurred. Through informal talks with a number of Peoples House of Representatives (DPR) Legislators and political party staff, I gathered that there are at least 20 DPR Legislators at the moment who managed to get elected only due to vote counting manipulation. Constitutional Courts data revealed that in the 2009 General Election, there were 627 election results complaints lodged by 42 political parties; 493 of which proceeded to court hearings and the court ruled in favor of 68 of them. That means that the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of 11 percent of all cases lodged. A caveat: there were more than 11 percent of complaints proven to be substantiated, but they were ruled out by the court because the discrepancy in vote counting was not significant enough to change the number of seat allocated. How can vote counting manipulation happen? Firstly, the simplest formula: no witness, no vote. If a political party has not managed to appoint a witness in vote counting at polling station, PPS, and PPK level, the votes they win will definitely disappear or at least decrease in number. This experience was the source of frustration for many candidates. They ask, how come, in several villages or wards where my families and friends live and voted for me, I did not receive any votes at all? The mistake of that candidate/that party: they did not appoint any witness at that village/ward. Secondly, as the system transitioned from closed-proportional list (1999), semi-open-proportional list (2004), to finally open-proportional list (2009), the role of party/candidates witness became more significant. Not only they steal votes from other parties, they also reassign votes acquired by one candidate into another within one party. This was what frequently occurred in the 2009 General Election where elected candidates were only those who collected the most amount of votes. Preventive Measures Why would witnesses move votes collected by one candidate into another within one political party? Simple: a witness is appointed by a party; being appointed by a party means that person is a party member; a party member may very likely be close or strongly affiliated with running candidates from that party. It is logical that party witnesses have candidates they prefer or are biased towards, as those candidates were the ones who appointed these witnesses in the first place. Certainly, vote counting manipulation will not matter if election officials at polling station, PPS, or PPK do not provide room for this to happen. A witness may instigate manipulation, but the one who gives the final green light is an election officer. Unholy cooperation between parties and election officers is what has allowed many candidates to be elected at DPR or DPRD despite factually they hadnt earned the position. Realizing that vote counting manipulation frequently occurred in the 2009 General Election, KPU has taken a number of preventive measures: Firstly is to print the TPS Vote Counting Results Certificate (Model C1 Form) on holographic paper. In the 2009 General Election results dispute court hearings, judges were often confounded by numerous C1 Forms signed by witnesses and officers of the same name. This occurred as an empty C1 Form at that time had been easy to copy then used to manipulate vote counting. Secondly, now, copies of C1 Form should not just be provided for party witnesses and official Bawaslu poll-watchers (PPL) but should also be displayed publicly at the polling station, PPS, and PPK, so that anyone can write down and take pictures of counting results at polling station which would make any manipulations in counting much more easily detectable. Thirdly, a C1 Form copy, through PPS and PPK, will be sent immediately to the Regency/Municipal KPU in order to be scanned. Scanning results will be sent to the National KPU then published at KPU website, so that any citizen can see polling station vote counting results at any given TPS in Indonesia. Any Room Left for Fraud? Given those preventive measures, it seems that vote counting manipulation at TPS, PPS, or PPK is unlikely. However, taking a closer look at the vote counting process, there is certainly still room left for manipulation to happen. In 2009, most manipulation happened at the PPK (as, then, polling station counting results were directly recapitulated at the PPK). Now, the level prone to manipulation is the polling station. Therefore, an additional eye should be focused to detect and prevent unholy cooperation between party witnesses and Polling Station Officials (KPPS members). All along, we consider vote counting at polling stations to be the most fraud-free as the counting is conducted in broad daylight, watched by a large number of local citizens. What people often overlook: the watching crowd often dissolves immediately after the counting on the large sheet of paper (C1 Plenary Form) finishes. While actually, there is still one very important step: replicating whats at the C1 Plenary Form into the C1 Form which will be submitted as the official polling station vote counting results. This step is where manipulation can happen. As the attending crowd does not normally watch the filling out of the C1 Form based on the C1 Plenary, election officers and witness are able to conspire to change vote counting results. For example, votes collected by Party A is altered from 110 in the C1 Plenary Form into 10 in the C1 Form, or votes collected by Candidate B is altered from 81 in the C1 Plenary Form into only 8 in the C1 Form. This kind of manipulation can be swiftly done by witnesses and officers because the numbers are written in small fonts and a calculator is used. If a mistaken number manages to enter the holographic C1 Form, this document will be considered as the valid vote counting reference from this point on. In order to prevent vote counting manipulation at the polling station, party witnesses and polling station officials have to be put on a leash. This is why every candidate must have a shadow witness or volunteers at every polling station. However, this needs a lot of money. In order to work around this, candidates having the good will to secure the real mandate of the people must cooperate with each other. The formula of this cooperation is simple: I will guard your votes (as well as mine) in these polling stations, so please guard my votes (as well as yours) in those other polling stations. DIDIK SUPRIYANTO is the Head of Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem)
Posted on: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 04:38:08 +0000
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