Election Complexity
Although the voter turnout for the 2019 legislative election was higher than that of the 2014 election, which was 81.69%, it was also followed by a high number of spoilt votes for the DPR election, totaling 17,503,953, equivalent to 11.12%. This figure is greater than votes the Functional Group Party (Golkar) received, which numbered 17,229,789. The phenomenon of high rates of invalid votes in the DPR election also occurred in the Provincial DPRD election. For example, in the West Java DPRD election, 3,659,012 ballots, or 15.4%, were determined to be invalid. Meanwhile, in the Lampung Province DPRD election, spoilt ballots reached 562,619, or 12.7%. A similar phenomenon occurred in the DPD election, where as many as 29,777,821, or 19% of the votes, were declared invalid.
The complexity of the electoral system is believed to have contributed to the increase in invalid votes in legislative elections. This can be measured from the trend of increasing numbers of spoilt votes since the 2004 election, when Indonesia first adopted an open list proportional representation election system for the DPR and DPRD elections. In addition, the DPD election with a single non-transferable vote system (multi-represented districts), which is elected simultaneously with the DPR and DPRD elections, certainly complicated the election implementation and burdened voters further on the voting day. Therefore, election organizers must be professional and demonstrate a strong commitment to unraveling and managing the existing complexities, so that voters’ voices are not ignored.
In the 1999 elections for members of the DPR, Provincial DPRD and Regency/City DPRD, a closed list proportional representation system was used. At that time, 3,708,386 ballots were considered invalid, equivalent to 3.4% of voters for the DPR election, whereas in the 2004 election, the number of spoilt votes increased to 10,957,925 or 8.8%. Invalid votes rose even more dramatically when the 2009 election adopted the voting method of putting a tick or check mark on the ballots. In the 2009 DPR election, 17,540,248 votes, equivalent to 14.4%, were found to be invalid. That ranked as the highest percentage of invalid votes from all the legislative elections held in Indonesia. Meanwhile, in the 2014 election, 14,601,436 ballots, or 10.46%, were declared invalid in the DPR election.
Discourses regarding invalid votes have become more rife and raised public concern. It is ironic that a vast number of voters swarm to the polling stations, but their votes cannot be counted, as they are counted as “invalid”. Some people associate invalid votes with voters’ protests, while others consider that the factors like the capacity of voters and election officers play a part. A number of researchers have conducted studies on the steep number of invalid votes.
Buying and Selling of Votes
Maulana et al. (2017), in a study, “Vote Error in the 2014 General Election: The Case of South Sumatra Province”, found five types of voting errors: (a) ballots without a punch mark, (b) a ballot with two punch marks, (c) ballots with a punch mark outside the provided column, (d) a ballot with more than two punch marks, and (e) ballots punched without using the tool (nail) provided.
Ballots with two punch marks dominated the invalid votes in the DPR election, while in the DPD election, most spoilt votes were ballots without punch marks. Indepth interviews conducted by the research team revealed that spoilt ballots in the DPR election were also affected by the buying and selling of votes among the legislative candidates. A source revealed that he received IDR 120,000 from a candidate’s campaign team, asking him to choose three candidates from the same party. The source, however, also admitted that he took up a similar offer from another party by accepting a IDR 150,000 fee. Confused by the multiple offers, he could not decide on the best legislative candidate and ended up casting his votes for all the candidates who gave him money. In the DPD election, voters who had no information about the candidates would unfold the ballots but did not cast any votes.
Quoting from Santi Covarida (2020), a study conducted by LP3ES on the factors of invalid votes in the 2014 DPR election found several voters’ behavioral patterns resulting in spoilt votes: (1) ballots were not punched because voters did not know the DPR candidates in their regions, (2) votes were not cast because they did not like the DPR candidates in their regions, (3) voters voted twice because they received money or goods from several candidates, (4) voters voted twice because unaware of how to vote correctly, and (5 ) voters gave double punch marks because they prefer certain parties but they also prefer certain candidates who are not from the party they chose. Thus, it shows a coherence between the findings of the research team in South Sumatra and LP3ES.