Election Day
This week I returned to Padang, ending my two-week trip to Bukit Tinggi. The opportunity to spend two weeks with an Indonesian family will absolutely be one of the highlights of my trip. My host, Ikshan, has four brothers and a total of seven nieces and nephews. The family made me feel like one of their own, and by the end of my stay the kids were calling me Uncle Cam. With six younger brothers and sisters awaiting my return to the States, spending time with Ikhsan’s nieces and nephews was a little bittersweet. Being Uncle Cam for my Indonesian family was awesome, but I would be lying if I said it did not make me miss my little guys back in the U.S. I was able to develop close friendships with Ikhsan’s brothers, and we had conversations ranging from futbol to the importance of religion and family in life. These conversations and memories are something that I truly value, and I could not thank the family enough for all that they did for me. It allowed me to learn the culture first hand, but it also allowed me to make relationships that will not end when I leave Indonesia in August. I promised the family I would see them again, and that is a promise I would like to keep.
I arrived in Padang on Sunday night, with the local elections happening Wednesday June 27th. Being in Padang for the election of a new Mayor was an excellent opportunity. The article I am writing is on the local election disputes, which arise from these very elections. Around Indonesia, 171 local elections occurred on Wednesday. The actual process of the election in Indonesia occurs at what is called a TPS, which are voting locations all around the city. Like in the U.S. the TPS is set up in public buildings, and I spent the day at a TPS in a high school. There are over 100 different TPS locations around Padang alone, which means that there are thousands of TPS around the country working to elect the 171 new heads of regional government.
The ballots in Indonesia are simply folded pamphlets. The voter checks in upon arrival, and their pinky finger is stamped with ink after voting to ensure that everyone only votes once. Politicians in the U.S. would have a field day with voter fraud claims under this system. To cast a vote, the voter simply punches a whole in the pamphlet over the candidate that they wish to vote for. While Indonesia has discussed moving to electronic ballots, they remain on the paper ballot system because not every district would currently be able to upgrade to the electronic system. This creates a few issues. One of these issues is actually making the votes count. If the voter does not punch a whole in the paper ballot appropriately, then the ballot will not be counted. While at the TPS, I saw an example of this. The TPS supervisor literally holds the ballot up to the light to see if he can clearly determine the selected candidate. When he cannot, he cancels the ballot.
The vote counting system is also somewhat lagging for the world’s third largest democracy. Voting occurs from 7 AM to 1 PM in all TPS locations. After the voting is closed, the TPS supervisor has to manually go through every ballot and announce each vote selection to witnesses that work for the candidates; this is how each TPS reaches its vote total. Once the TPS supervisor goes through every ballot, he opens the ballot box and shows the witnesses that there are no other ballots in the box. He then places the ballots in the box and seals it. The vote count is electronically sent to an election commission called the PPS, which is responsible for a certain number of TPS within its working area. All PPS then pass the vote counts on to the City KPU, the top election commission for the election of mayor. The ballot boxes also follow this chain. The City KPU then totals the counts from all of the PPS and announces the winner of the election. This complicated chain of paper ballots mixed with electronic data sharing is the process that causes election result disputes that could make it to Indonesia’s Constitutional Court. If a candidate pair can show, with evidence, that the vote count was incorrect at some step of the election process and that it would affect the outcome, then they have a case. I will travel to the Constitutional Court in Jakarta this week to see the disputes that arise from these 171 elections. If the 2018 election disputes are anything like they have been in the past, then I will have a lot to observe. The complex election process creates a lot of opportunity for mistakes, which creates a lot of opportunity for election disputes. The process is not great for the Country’s democracy, but it creates a lot of interesting research.