TheJakartaPost

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Jakarta Post

Polling body begins vote counting

The General Election Commission conducted on Wednesday a vote count via text message, reaffirming the results of quick counts that gave a majority victory to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono

Andra Wisnu (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Thu, July 9, 2009

Share This Article

Change Size

Polling body begins vote counting

The General Election Commission conducted on Wednesday a vote count via text message, reaffirming the results of quick counts that gave a majority victory to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono.

According to the KPU’s “quick count”, the SBY-Boediono won 60 percent of votes, the Megawati-Prabowo ticket 29.67 percent and the JK-Wiranto 9.62 percent.

The KPU’s results mirrors those that came from several institutions doing quick counts such as Lembaga Survey Indonesia (the Indonesian Survey Institute), Institute of Economic and Social Studies and Development (LP3S) and Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI).

Andi Nurpati, a KPU member handling the KPU’s quick count, stressed that the results showed at the KPU’s voting tabulation site (tnp.kpu.go.id/pilpres200907/sms/static/), which was provided in cooperation with the help from the International Foundation for Electoral System (IFES) and launched late Wednesday evening at the KPU office in Jakarta.

As of Wednesday evening, the polling body gathered only about 4 million votes out of about 40,000 text messages from poll officers spread around the nation.

“The results is only 40,000-something out of about 104,000 poll officers who have already been registered by the KPU,” she said.

“We will continue receiving their text messages and update the Website as we receive them. Currently, there is no deadline on when all the results must be in so just keep on checking periodically.”

However, that the KPU only had 4 million votes from about 40,000 polling stations signals an immensely low voter turn-out as each polling station takes a maximum of 800 voters, which translates to more than 20 million voters, or about 16 million voters missing from the count.

Another KPU member, Abdul Aziz, said the results shown in the vote tabulation was not meant to be a reference because the number shown in the site came from text messages, which may have been inputted incorrectly, while other messages may have not been deemed accurate enough to show in the site.

“We have an internal mechanism to filter these results, but this is still not the most reliable result.

The most reliable result will be the manual counting, which we plan to do gradually beginning on July 22 up to July 24,” he said, adding the manual vote-counting began from the polling stations nationwide soon after the ballotin and continued with a recapitulation starting from subdistrict to provincial level.

As of 9 p.m., the tabulation results from text messages have not changed.

The SBY–Boediono pair received about 2.48 million votes, the Megawati–Prabowo pair 1.2 million votes and the Kalla–Wiranto pair received a little less than 400,000 votes.

 

KPU’s schedule for the presidential election:

• July 8: Voting Day

• July 9 - July 10: Poll workers (KPPS) count the results from within their respective polling stations.

• July 10 - July 15: Vote-counting at the district level nationwide.

• July 16 – July 18: Vote-counting by the local general election committee at the regency/municipality level nationwide.

• July 19 – July 21: Vote-counting at the provincial level in 33 provinces.

• July 22 – July 24: The General Election Commission (KPU) will calculate the vote count from all across the country.

• July 25 – July 27: The KPU announces president-elect on July 25 and gives three days to the losers to accept the election’s results or not. This announcement is made only if the winner grabs a single majority.

• July 28-Aug.11: Settlements of election conflicts.

• Aug. 1-12: Officiating of election results.

• Oct. 20: President- and Vice President-elect are sworn in.

{

Your Opinion Matters

Share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you've encountered on The Jakarta Post. We're here to listen.

Enter at least 30 characters
0 / 30

Thank You

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your feedback.