For much of last year, the biggest concern about the elections due to get underway in just a few weeks’ time centered on the voter rolls and their ranks of so-called ghost voters — fictional or ineligible entries that could be used for ballot stuffing.
With the campaign season now underway, the focus has shifted to the age-old practice of vote buying.
But neither of these issues, say politicians and experts alike, poses anywhere near as serious a threat as that of electronic ballot stuffing — when vote tallies from polling stations are inflated or slashed, depending on the need, during the process to enter them into an electronic database.
Hasto Kristiyanto, a deputy secretary general of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), says this has happened before.
He points to an incident during the vote-counting process for the 2009 elections, when the electronic data entry by the General Elections Commission (KPU) in Jakarta was interrupted by a power outage.
After the power came back on, the data had been altered, Hasto says.
“It showed that there were up to 50 percent non-voters” — invalidating countless votes for virtually every party except the Democratic Party — “but that was because of [a mistake in] the system,” he says.
He adds that the PDI-P has conducted its own simulation of the vote-counting system, and has found that votes for parties or individual candidates can be “artificially increased” by up to 7 percentage points without anyone noticing.
The Democrats have since recruited two KPU commissioners from the 2009 team, one of whom, Andi Nurpati, was subjected to an ethics inquiry after it was revealed that she had become a party member while still a member of a KPU — a clear violation of the rules.
Syahfan Badri Sampurno, the campaign team manager from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which is in the Democrats’ ruling coalition, acknowledges that the potential for electronic ballot stuffing is high.
To that end, the PKS has set up the National Tabulation Center to keep a close eye on any attempt to fake the data entered into the KPU’s computer system.
It may be high-tech, but the facility will depend on an army of volunteer election observers posted at every single polling station nationwide.
Once officials at a polling station have conducted a manual count of the ballots, in the presence of observers, and locked the ballots in crates to be shipped to the subdistrict offices of the KPU, they must sign a report, known as the C1 form, stating the exact number of votes counted.
The C1 forms are also submitted to the subdistrict KPU offices. Those offices then count the ballots, compare them to the C1 forms, and feed the numbers into a database. The process is repeated at the district level, provincial level and finally at the national level.
The job of the National Tabulation Center observers, Syahfan says, will be to take a photograph of the physical C1 form as soon as it is signed at the polling station. The photos are then submitted to the tabulation center, where officials can refer to them to identify any alternations made to the forms in the subsequent stages of the vote-counting process.
“The only issue is that we need human resources,” Syahfan says.
“As such, we are building a strategic alliance with other parties who share our idea.”
Experts agree that the highest potential for fraud is not at the polling stations, when the ballots are manually counted, but at the subdistrict level and up, when the data are entered into the computer system.
“Polling stations tend to conduct vote counts correctly,” Sylvia W. Sumarlin, the chairwoman of the Indonesian Information Technology Federation (FTII), said as quoted by Kompas.com.
“But the numbers get altered at the subdistrict stage.”
She encouraged parties and observers to take a picture of the C1 forms.
“The more digital proof people have, the harder it will be for those at the subdistrict level to alter the numbers,” she said.
The Indonesian Technology Auditor Association (IATI) called on the KPU last month to conduct an audit into its information technology system to ensure the commission’s transparency.
Marzan Aziz Iskandar, the IATI chairman, said the audit was necessary to make sure that the information system that would be used in the elections complied with the 2008 Information Systems and Electronic Transactions Law, which stipulates that the use of technology and electronic transaction should be for the purpose of providing a sense of security, justice and legal certainty.
“That is why a pre-audit and a post-audit has to be done to ensure the system works well,” he said.
Hari Noegroho, the IATI deputy chairman, echoed the call, saying the KPU should actively push for the audits. He added that the association would be willing to help the commission search for professional auditors if needed.
“A technology audit is important to get the public’s trust. We are ready if asked to help look for a professional auditor. An audit is important for critical things, to minimize the risk of fraud,” Hari said.
The State Intelligence Agency (BIN) has also highlighted IT fraud as one of the core threats to the upcoming elections, alongside terrorism and political violence.
Richardus Eko Indrajit, a computer sciences professor from the Perbanas Institute, said at a discussion earlier this month that public mistrust of computerized systems, including for the elections, remained high in Indonesia.
“The main issue is the lack of trust,” he said on March 6 as quoted by Kompas.com. He said that eventually Indonesia would need to accept that IT systems were invaluable in the election process, especially given the logistical challenges of catering to a population of 250 million, and growing, scattered over a far-flung archipelago.
Source/Fuente: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/risk-electronic-ballot-stuffing-flag...
