Preliminary Study: Electronic Counting in Indonesian National Election Using Computer Answer Sheets and DMR Software

Abstract

The 2019 election is the most expensive, complicated, and the worst of the 12 elections in Indonesian history. There are 894 election officers’ death due to overworking load and it cost the nation 25 trillion Rupiah or about 1.8 billion USD, involved 16 parties, 192.2 million voters, 7.6 million officers, and 810,329 polling stations spreading in 83,405 villages throughout Indonesia. The election was held simultaneously for selecting legislative members and the president, utilized five ballots, and was held one day, including for polling, and counting, making the 2019 elections the most complicated in the world. The time for processing five ballots for voting took about 5-7 minutes on average and another five minutes for counting. Moreover, the ballot tabulation process from polling stations to the national level was manual and took 36 calendar days, adding complexity to the post-election process. This work aims to propose an approach to improve the efficiency and accountability of the voting and tabulation process. Propose to use a single ballot like a computer answer sheet, marked with a regular marker, optical scanned, and finally processed by Digital Mark Reader (DMR) software. The proposal can save 280.7 million square meters of paper use nationally, shorten 80% of voting time to no more than one minute, increase pooling station capacity by 930%, and 8 working hours for officers in. And in the Kapuk-Jakarta Administration Area alone, it can save a budget of Rp 3.4 billion and 38,556 working hours.