270 poll workers dead: The high cost of Indonesia’s manual vote counting

Counting votes by hand has always been backbreaking work. But for some poll workers in Indonesia, it proved to be deadly as well. Some 270 election workers have passed away from exhaustion, under pressure to finish the counting two weeks after the country’s general elections. 

Arief Priyo Susanto, spokesman of Indonesia’s General Elections Commission (KPU), said that most deaths were due to fatigue-related illnesses caused by long hours of work counting of ballot papers by hand. In addition to the fatalities, some 1,878 other staff had fallen ill.

Although the polls were generally peaceful, the counting is far from over. Authorities do not expect to conclude vote counting and officially announce winners until May 22.

The tragedy underscores the even uglier side of manual elections and should jolt election managers everywhere to rethink their counting systems. What makes this even more tragic is that modern voting technology already exists that could spare poll workers from this ordeal. 

The poll workers were up against something daunting --- for the first time in Indonesia’s history, authorities combined presidential, parliamentary and regional elections in one day. This meant that the 6 million poll workers had to prepare 810,000 polling stations to receive 193 million eligible voters. Roughly 245,000 candidates were vying for more than 20,000 national and local legislative seats. 

In addition to the sheer size of the election, the geography further complicated logistics. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising some 18,000 islands across an area of 1.9 million square kilometers. 

According to the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank, these were "one of the most complicated single-day elections in global history."

As two other Asian countries have shown, technology has the power to improve election administration. in Indonesia. 

India, which has been automating vote counting since 2004, is now using some 1.2 million electronic voting machines to make their elections better. For this year’s Lok Sabha election, 10 million election officials are conducting the largest democratic elections in the world. 840 eligible voters are scheduled to participate in a voting exercise that will span throughout five weeks. Once voting is done, votes will be electronically counted, consolidated and announced. Though there is still room for improvement, India has managed to make voting more accessible and transparent relying on technology. 

The Philippines will head to the polls on May 13 to hold midterm elections. This archipelago, which is a neighbor of Indonesia, has automated vote counting since 2010 with impressive results. Some 90,000 optical scanners are used to digitize and count the votes of some 63 million voters. Since the Philippines began automating vote counting, poll workers have benefited from simplified processes and reduced hours of operation. Also, by minimizing the role poll workers play on election day, they have become less vulnerable to bribing and coercion. 

The tragedy has thrown Indonesia’s General Elections Commission in the spotlight. It must take decisive measures to prevent another tragedy of this magnitude from ever happening again. Better processes, better organization, and better technology have become urgent imperatives.

India and the Philippines show this can be done.

The move toward Nigerian e-voting in 2019

There is a rising movement to modernize and improve Nigeria, working to overcome its history of societal and governmental challenges. A challenge for the nation in transition is to open up the democracy to its citizens with a safe, secure and reliable electoral system.

The road has been long, hard and arduous as Nigeria tries to establish a robust electronic voting infrastructure for its elections. This dates back to at least 1999 when the nation ended a 30-year dictatorial regime and replaced it with what it hoped to be a functional democracy. The nation has struggled to offer fair, free and transparent elections since 2012 and the move to electronic voting could help to achieve this mission.

National elections involve a lot of planning and they can exert widespread impact both in Nigeria itself and abroad. Interestingly enough, some schools in Nigeria may present a viable example for the country at large to follow. The Adeyemi University of Education recently held elections to choose its student government. The process was deemed a success and it is now being seen as “a template for students' elections across the country and even a model for national elections in the country.”

Particular attention is being paid to how Adeyemi implemented and ran its student election using electronic voting technology. Students could vote just about anywhere using the Internet, using their mobile phones. For students without Internet access, four ICT centres and polling units were provided, including Uninterrupted Power Supply units for better and more reliable performance. In a country where access to electricity and Internet may be difficult, these are a must.

Student body governments and elections cannot be immediately equated to the processes and procedures of a full and functional government, but they can serve as an example of what is possible and within reach today. As Nigeria moves forward toward using e-voting on a national scale, including its experimentation with biometric authentication of voter identities, support is growing for the adoption of this technology.

Indeed, both the National Association of Peaceful Elections in Nigeria (NAPEN) and the International Foundation for Electoral System (IFES) are strongly encouraging the introduction of early voting and full electronic voting in time for the 2019 general elections. They are looking at the introduction of the card readers as a first-step toward e-voting, for instance, as well as improving peace education to limit the violence observed in past Nigerian elections.

By the time of the 2019 general elections, Nigeria would have already had 20 uninterrupted years of democratic rule. To this end, it has been argued that now is the time “to consolidate on the baby steps taken over the last 5 elections.” Many logistical issues plagued the 2015 elections, including the millions of disenfranchised Nigerians who could not vote or chose not to vote for fear of violence.

Electoral reform is clearly needed and it should not be left to the last minute. The time to prepare for the 2019 e-voting future of Nigeria starts now. 

Scytl in Ecuador: how to jeopardize an entire election

A simulation on the February elections
was carried out last February 9 in Quito
using the Scytl system.  (Image: Ecuador Times)

On April 18 the president of Ecuador's National Electoral Council (CNE for its Spanish acronym), Domingo Paredes, announced a series of legal actions to be taken against Scytl, a digital voting services company, for failing to meet their contractual obligations during the February 23 Sectional Elections.

More specifically, Paredes proclaimed the unilateral termination of the contract and the immediate collection of the bank guarantee, further, he demanded the return of advance payments made, and officially declared that Scytl had not met the requirements of the contract.

This new chapter of the February 23 Sectional Elections has prompted a round of mutual accusations between the parts –the National Electoral Council of Ecuador (CNE) and Scytl-, as neither one wants to take the blame for the egregious delay of the national results. 

Among other things, the Barcelona-based company had been hired to process the tallying of the votes so that results could be announced within 72 hours after closing. However, it actually took nearly a month to complete the task of processing the votes and arriving at official results. Only Azuay and Santo Domingo de Tsáchilas, the two provinces with automated voting for which Scytl did not offer its tallying system, announced results on Election Day. 

Besides the legal disputes that are likely to evolve from the public positions both parties are taking, one simple, yet very important question, needs to be asked: Why didn't Scytl warn this was going to happen?

Good practices in the Electronic Voting industry require that a series of tests and pilots be carried before any election occurs. In-house alpha, beta, and “real-world” pilot testing are crucial in any mission critical project of this kind.

Testing is the only way to guarantee minimal disruption in the flow of the process, and to prove that the applications logic and accompanying infrastructure are in working order. 

There are two possible answers to the question. Either the test runs were poorly planned, so they did not raise the necessary flags to avoid the catastrophe; or the tests did in fact serve to alert the problems ahead, but no adequate or sufficient action was taken. Time will tell, as the two parts explain their viewpoints. 

In a February 15th pilot, a group of technicians pointed out some weaknesses possibly leading to failures of the system. In an article published by Hoy, Enrique Mafla -Ecuadorian computer expert- pointed out that issues with the source code and the awarding system had been detected before E-day. He signaled Scytl as responsible for them. 

Fabián Auz, informatics delegate from SUMA, also claimed there had been poor planning of the technical audits prior to the election, and that several problems had been spotted.

During the days that followed Election Day, and while the entire nation was demanding results, Scytl representatives acknowledged problems with their application. However, they are now fighting back claiming their system performed as planned, that it provided timely results, and that they met all contractual obligations.

It is hard to judge at this point who will finally be blamed for jeopardizing the election. Every effort needs to be made to ensure zero delays occur. But a one-month delay is not acceptable. Not in the age of instant communications, not with the advanced election technology now available in the market.