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Proposal to scrap single-day elections emerges
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A local poll administrator assists a voter on Nov. 27, 2024, at a flooded polling station, during the 2024 regional election in Medan, North Sumatra. (Antara/Yudi Manar)
A
proposal to tweak the current format of the simultaneous presidential and legislative elections has taken center stage in a series of meetings at the House of Representatives over the past two weeks, with elections and democracy experts advocating for separate elections.
The House and the Home Ministry are seeking to redesign the electoral system, prompting discussions among policymakers on whether the nation should continue holding the presidential and legislative elections on a single day.
During a discussion with House Commission II overseeing home affairs this week, election observers and academics endorsed the idea of scrapping the single-day format and instead holding the elections on two different days.
They said the first group of elections would consist of elections for president, House lawmakers and members of the Regional Representatives Council (DPD) and the second would be elections for members of the legislatures at the provincial, municipal and regental levels (DPRD).
“We hope that simultaneous elections can be implemented in a way that improves our presidential system,” researcher Delia Widianto of the University of Indonesia’s (UI) Center For Political Studies (Puskapol) told lawmakers during the meeting on Wednesday.
“By separating the national and local elections, we can achieve the goals expected from simultaneous elections, which is to raise voters’ awareness of which candidates are running and the policy positions of each candidate,” Delia said.
Delia cited Puskapol’s findings that showed that the current format of a single-day general election might have increased voter turnout but had failed to imptove voters’ knowledge of the candidates, especially in legislative elections.
