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Local election offices reject hoards of late voters
People who wished to vote outside of their registered electoral district flocked to local election commission offices.
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So many choices: Residents study lists of candidates running in the elections on display at the General Elections Commission office in Malang, East Java, on Tuesday. Sixteen political parties are standing in the April 17 elections. (The Jakarta Post/Aman Rochman)
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fter waiting for an answer for nearly three days, Tangerang resident Rusman Hia was caught off guard on Wednesday when district officials declined his A5 form request to cast his vote outside of his electoral district in Bunaken, South Sulawesi.
“I didn’t know that they had stopped processing A5 form registrations. It’s a shame because I think it's important for everyone to vote,” said Rusman, who had to fly to Surabaya a few days before the deadline.
The case was different for Ade Kania Pramesty, 21, who failed to register her application as she was struck by dengue fever a day before registration closed. As a Depok resident who now studies at a university in Semarang, Central Java, she expressed hope that her local polling station would allow her to vote.
“I was at the recovery stage of the dengue fever, so maybe the officials saw that I was active enough to be considered healthy,” Kania said.
“But if the election ends up with a candidate winning whom I don’t agree with, I think I will be very apathetic about the government for the next five years.”
Many potential voters have had their A5 form applications rejected in the last few weeks. For all three applicants, the reasons were the same: they did not qualify for last-minute registration.
The criteria in the 2017 constitutional court ruling on elections state that voters have to submit their A5 form application before March 17.
