Jakarta. Mistakes in the distribution of ballots for Indonesia’s legislative elections have been found in at least 17 of the nation’s 34 provinces the General Elections Commission (KPU) said on Friday.
The problem, which has affected tens of thousands of voters so far, likely occurred when the ballots were sorted at the district level, KPU commissioner Arief Budiman said on Friday. As a result hundreds of polling stations received the ballots for the wrong voting area, each listing another region’s candidates for the Provincial Legislative Council (DPRD). They were punched anyway, but the votes did not count, Arief said.
“The highest number of the distribution mix-ups happened in West Java, where they were found in 17 districts,” Arief said Friday.
In Bandung, the elections will be held again on April 13 at 300 polling stations after voters punched the wrong ballots. In Sukabumi, the voting would have to be redone at 99 polling stations — an issue that affected at least 30,000 voters, the Sukabumi branch of the KPU reported on Friday. The local KPU had to stop the elections until the issues could be resolved.
“In every polling station we found that at least five to 20 of the ballots had been switched,” Sukabumi KPU head Hamzah said. “Based on the regulations we had to stop the voting.”
Additional revotes have to be done at some polling stations in Bogor, West Java, after commission members found that ballots at some 22 polling stations were punched before the official start of the election.
Outside West Java, voting irregularities were reported in the Yahukimo district of Papua — where inclement weather affected the distribution of ballots, and in Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara — where polling stations were thousands of ballots short.
Despite the mishaps, the vast majority of Indonesia’s legislative elections concluded without serious concerns, Arief said. In total, issues were reported at only 1 percent of the more than 500,000 polling stations set up across the archipelago.
An estimated 75 percent of Indonesia’s 186 million registered voters took the polls on April 9, casting their ballots in one of the world’s largest democratic elections.
Source/Fuente: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/kpu-reports-voting-glitches-17-indon...
