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Ballot 'marking' method the way to go: Vice President
To mark or to punch? Vice President Jusuf Kalla has said indicating choice by marking a ballot instead of punching it will help avoid vote manipulation during ballot counting in next year's elections
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To mark or to punch? Vice President Jusuf Kalla has said indicating choice by marking a ballot instead of punching it will help avoid vote manipulation during ballot counting in next year's elections.
"The old method of punching the ballots expedites vote manipulation. There's a possibility that if a staff member of the General Elections Commission (KPU) supports a certain party, he could easily use a nail to tear a ballot to invalidate it," Kalla told the press in Jakarta on Friday.
Indonesian voters have used nails to punch ballots since the 1955 elections.
"We have been using the same method for 50 years. At that time, we used nails to punch the ballots due to the high illiteracy rate that then was more than 50 percent," Kalla said.
"Today, our eligible voters are literate so there won't be any problem with them putting a check mark on the ballots," he said, adding that only 7 percent of the country's 230 million population was illiterate.
Kalla said only Indonesia and Cameron still used the punching method.
Indonesia will hold its legislative elections on April 9, 2009. The presidential election will follow in July.
The KPU has yet to clarify the nature of its proposed marking system.
The 2008 Election Law states that a ballot is only valid if the voter has marked the name and the number of the selected political party in the boxes provided.
The law also stipulates that if a party's box is marked, the vote will be pooled to determine how many legislative seats the party can secure. However, if a candidate's box is marked, the vote will go directly to the candidate.
A total of 38 political parties will contest the elections, not including four additional parties confined to Aceh.
The KPU has designed three ballot formats and is running tests on them in Papua, East Java and Aceh. The poll body will decide which format will be used once the trial period has been completed.
A civil election monitoring group has criticized the KPU, saying that the ballot designs and the marking method may confuse visually impaired voters.
The Indonesia Parliamentary Monitoring Forum (Formappi) also called on the KPU to immediately publish the ballot formats and voting procedures to familiarize the public with the voting process.
