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he Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) struck a deal with the General Elections Commission (KPU) for the implementation of an electronic vote counting system for the legislative and presidential elections in 2014.

The agency also signed the deal with the Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) and the Election Organizers Ethics Council (DKPP).

'€œIt is an innovative move to provide transparent, accountable, fast, accurate and efficient election results,'€ BPPT chief Marzan Aziz Iskandar told The Jakarta Post late last week.

Marzan said the BPPT offered seven electronic vote-counting technologies to the KPU, including the short message service (SMS) based Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) and Digital Mark Reader (DMR).

'€œIf we want to have faster results, USSD could display around 40 percent of total votes on election day. However, it is unable to send pictures of recapitulation forms [C1 forms] from every polling station as authentic proof,'€ he said.

With the DMR, the KPU will be able display data of around 90 percent of votes within seven days, along with scanned images of C1 forms.

He said that the traditional vote recapitulation process could take 20 to 30 days to finish because it had to go through a complex process all the way from polling stations, villages, subdistricts and district, regency and provincial levels, before finally reaching the KPU headquarters in Jakarta.

'€œThe good thing about the electronic recapitulation system is that data will be sent directly from polling stations to the KPU. The KPU never proceeds data directly from polling stations, but only from the regency level. This system is very transparent and we can trace any data should irregularities happen,'€ Marzan said.

It would take a while however before the BPPT plan could be put in place as the country is yet to have a legal basis on e-voting (electronic voting).

DKPP chairman Jimly Asshiddiqie however argued other relevant regulations could be used as a legal ground for e-voting.

'€œWe can certainly apply Law No. 14/ 2008 on transparency of public information, Law No. 11/2008 on information and electronic transactions and Public Service Law No. 25/2009,'€ Jimly said.

Jimly also said that the biggest challenge was to get support from the public. '€œIt is not easy to win public support when it comes to technology as their mind-set keeps telling them that technology can be manipulated,'€ he added.

In order for the new technology to succeed, Jimly said that the KPU needed to get support from political parties participating in the next election.

'€œWe have to convince the public that electronic information, electronic documents or their printed version could be used as legal tender, so any form of fraud can be investigated. Technology could prove manipulated technology, so no need to worry,'€ Jimly said. (hrl)