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Irregularities and violations commonplace on polling day
Problems marred Thursday's legislative elections with many polling stations facing a shortage of ballot papers and snags with voters lists, confirming prior worries about poor election preparations by authorities
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Problems marred Thursday's legislative elections with many polling stations facing a shortage of ballot papers and snags with voters lists, confirming prior worries about poor election preparations by authorities.
Despite these problems, General Elections Commission (KPU) members spent hours *monitoring' how President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono cast his votes in Cikeas, Bogor and how Vice President Jusuf Kalla voted in Menteng, Central Jakarta.
In the afternoon, the polls body had a plenary meeting to discuss election problems, including the delay in voting in some regencies in Papua and problems with ballots switched to the wrong areas.
"If the switched ballot papers have been marked, they are valid in the vote counting," plenary decision signed by KPU chairman Abdul Hafiz Anshary said.
The decision to count marked swiched ballots was conveyed to provincial and regency poll bodies (KPUDs) in the late afternoon when counting was almost completed.
The vote counting was scheduled to be completed by 7 p.m., with results to be sent to the subdistrict election offices later in the evening.
The subdistrict offices then send the results to the regency, which delivers the regency results to the province within a week.
Several polling stations including in Mamuju, West Sulawesi and Purwakarta in West Java received ballots designed for other areas.
The KPU added that areas failing to perform balloting or vote counting because of riots, security disorder or natural disasters were allowed to run *extra' elections until April 13 at the latest.
In Depok, the local polls body distributed a circular allowing unregistered people to cast ballots by showing ID cards to the ad hoc elections committee (KPPS).
The letter, dated April 8 said any Depok residents recorded in the voter list for the 2005 municipal polls or last year's gubernatorial elections in West Java could exercise their right to vote in the legislative elections even though not on the voter list.
KPU member Endang Sulastri ordered this to be withdrawn since her office had not been informed about the letter signed by Yoyo Effendi of the Depok KPU law division.
The letter was withdrawn hours after the Depok balloting finished.
Meanwhile, South Jakarta Elections Supervisory Commitee (Panwaslu) arrested 16 illegal voters in Pasar Manggis, South Jakarta.
Head of the Jakarta Panwaslu Ramdansyah confirmed the illegal voters had used identities which did not match names in the voters lists.
In Pekayon, East Jakarta, 16 voters were also found to have used identities of dead people to vote.
"We will file all cases to the police right away after we finish questioning witnesses and collecting evidence," he said.
The People's Voter Educations Network (JPPR) reported about 40 percent of election irregularities were related to problems with voter lists, and that 30 percent reflected logistics difficulties.
"Several polling stations including in Medan, North Sumatra ran out of ballots so they have to take papers from other electoral districts," JPPR executive director Daniel Zuchron told reporters.
He said that in Sumbersari area in Jember, the ballot papers came late.
JPPR deployed 3,500 volunteers to monitor polling stations in 132 regencies across 28 provinces.
"We also found about 20 percent of irregularities concerned money politics where members of certain parties distributed money to voters.
"The irregularities show that the election organizers were not well prepared," he said.
