The government has reported that 83 poll workers died during and after last week’s general election, an improvement from the hundreds of deaths recorded in the 2019 election, but a figure that officials have vowed to bring down further in future elections.

With close to 205 million people on the voter roll, Indonesian general elections are the world’s third-largest and are considered some of the most complex.

To accommodate voting at such a scale, the General Elections Commission (KPU) set up some 820,000 polling stations nationwide for the Feb. 14 poll.

Some 7.9 million workers were recruited either by the KPU or the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) to help operate polling stations, monitor the voting process or maintain order at the stations. They included 5.7 million paid volunteers recruited by the KPU as poll administrators (KPPS) to man polling stations and manually count ballots there, a fast-paced endeavor that can take more than a day of continuous work to complete.

The strenuous work is believed to have been a factor in many of the deaths.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, KPU chair Hasyim Asy’ari said a total of 71 workers recruited by the KPU, mostly poll administrators, had died from voting day until Monday, including at least two workers at the subdistrict polling committee (PPS).

The deaths were in addition to 13 deaths reported among workers for the Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu), which is under Bawaslu, bringing the total death toll to 84.

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