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s the world'€™s third-largest democracy after India and the United States, Indonesia has surprisingly sailed through 10 general elections since gaining independence in 1945 despite not having any viable voter database.

In its first eight elections held between 1955 and 1999, the country relied on an electoral roll sporadically prepared just months ahead of election day. This technique was not only time consuming but was also considered a waste of money, since such an electoral roll could not be used more than once.

The idea of establishing a sustainable voter database was first endorsed by the General Elections Commission (KPU) under the leadership of University of Indonesia (UI) political sciences professor Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin in 2003. The KPU argued that an established electoral database would not only help the body in arranging election logistics and the distribution of legislative seats but also in updating data on voters for future elections.

Cooperating with the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the KPU launched in the same year the Sustainable Voter Registration and Census (P4B), which aimed at building the country'€™s first electoral database. The database, according to the KPU, would record a dozen variables, including voters'€™ names, gender,
addresses and any type of disability.

After organizing the 2004 general and presidential elections with relatively few problems, the KPU handed over the results of the Rp 427 billion (US$35.4 million) census to the Home Ministry, which is authorized to update voter data for regional elections and future general elections.

Instead of using existing P4B data as a basis for compiling a voter list, the Home Ministry, however, launched a Rp 3.8 trillion project to update the potential voter list (DP4) for regional elections between 2005 and 2009 and for the 2009 general election by using data from family cards, which contain information about citizens living under the same roof.

The final voter list (DPT) produced through the P4B, however, failed to satisfy the public and many political parties, especially after it became a source of dispute during the 2008 East Java gubernatorial election and the 2009 general and presidential elections.

To help the KPU prepare the DPT for the 2014 general election, the Home Ministry has once again provided the body with data on potential voters. This time, the data was collected from the ministry'€™s Rp 5.8 trillion electronic identity card (e-KTP) project.

Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi has repeatedly said that data from the ministry'€™s e-KTP project would help the KPU prepare a more reliable DPT than that used in previous elections.

Their collaboration, however, drew criticism after the KPU announced in November that 10.4 million invalid voters had been discovered when it tried to verify the ministry'€™s DP4 data.

UI political sciences lecturer Chusnul Mar'€™iyah, who served as a KPU commissioner from 2001 to 2007, criticized both the Home Ministry and the KPU for not producing a reliable electoral roll after spending trillions of rupiah over the past few years.

Instead of relying on the DP4 data from the Home Ministry to prepare the DPT, Chusnul suggested the KPU use population data provided by the BPS, which she considered more credible in managing statistics-related information.

'€œIn the Home Ministry'€™s e-KTP project, it is the citizens who are encouraged to be active participants, while in the BPS census it is census officers who meet them in person,'€ she said.

Another major flaw, according to Chusnul, is the odd discrepancy between population data from the Home Ministry and that provided by the BPS.

'€œData from the ministry, for example, shows that [the Central Java city of] Sragen has seen a negative annual population growth of around 8 percent even though it experienced no natural disaster or war in the past few years. Meanwhile, the population in Papua suspiciously grew by more than 25 percent, much higher than the national average annual population growth of approximately 1.5 percent,'€ she said.

Those 17 years of age and older and those married are eligible to vote in general and presidential elections.

The BPS recorded in 2010 that Sragen and Papua had 856,483 and 2,851,999 eligible voters, respectively. Meanwhile, data collected by the Home Ministry in 2012, which were submitted to the KPU, show that Sragen'€™s population dropped 15.6 percent to 741,142, while Papua'€™s population soared by 48.1 percent to 4,224,232.

The 2012 Legislative Elections Law stipulates that the KPU has the authority to prepare the DPT based on data of eligible voters compiled by the central and local governments and during the latest regional head election.

The law also stipulates that valid data on voters must include name, date of birth, gender, address and civil registration number. If one of the elements is missing, the data is deemed void.

In the 2004 election, the KPU registered 147 million voters out of the total population of 218 million. Five years later, it registered 171 million voters out of the total population of 231 million.

For the 2014 election, the KPU has registered 186 million people out of 251 million, the BPS'€™ total population estimate for the general election.

Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician Hasto Kristianto said DPT mismanagement had made general elections more complex, especially after the Constitutional Court ruled in 2008 that individual politicians could compete against each other in general elections.

'€œThe MK [Constitutional Court] ruling, along with DPT mismanagement, has brought more complicated rules to the entire process of general elections. This, at the same time, has also made elections open to manipulation,'€ he said.

Before the 2009 general election, political parties had the right to appoint candidates for legislative seats based on the overall vote for the party. Today, individual legislative candidates compete directly against each other for their seats based on votes they personally get.

Despite the ongoing dispute over the DPT, KPU commissioner Ferry Kurnia Rizkiyansyah claimed that the KPU was on the right track, saying that its current information system worked much better than that used in previous elections.

'€œOur online system is able to run surveillance on daily changes in [voter] data, including corrections to those declared void. This never happened in previous elections,'€ Ferry said.

He also said the KPU was committed to providing sustainable and reliable voter data. '€œOne of our goals is to establish a consolidated nationwide electoral roll the public can
access,'€ he said.

'€“ Hasyim Widhiarto and Hans Nicholas Jong