March 5, 2024
JAKARTA – The General Elections Commission (KPU) is updating the list of Indonesian voters in Kuala Lumpur after alleged electoral fraud spoiled the voting in the Malaysian city and led to a revote.
Seven officials from the Kuala Lumpur election committee (PPLN) were named suspects on Thursday for allegedly tampering with the region’s voter list “because of the influence of lobbying from representatives of political parties”, according to the police.
KPU commissioner Mochammad Afifuddin said that the agency was in the process of updating the allegedly tampered voter roll before some 200,000 registered voters are slated for the 2024 general election revote on March 9 through mobile ballot boxes and March 10 at polling stations.
“The criminal probe [of the seven election officials] will not affect voters’ data updating process in Kuala Lumpur as we suspended these officials before the police named them as suspects,” Afifuddin said on Saturday.
He said he was optimistic that the KPU could finish the update before the revote.
Irregularities
The overseas voting process has been widely scrutinized by candidates, political parties and observers alike, with reports of irregularities and possible foul play circulating on social media since polling stations for Indonesians living abroad opened between Feb. 5 and 14. Voters in several cities across the globe cast their ballots through mobile ballot boxes and mail-in ballots.
Read also: Bawaslu, KPU on guard for overseas voting amid potential glitches, foul play
Voting in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 11 has attracted particular attention after the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) announced that it had found indications of administrative violations during the election process.
Among the irregularities found in the city were over 62,000 unregistered mail-in votes with untraceable addresses, damaged ballot papers and alterations to the voter list.
Following the findings, Bawaslu advised the KPU to hold a revote in Kuala Lumpur, especially for voters who had cast their ballots by mail or at mobile ballot boxes.
The KPU was supposed to hold the revote within ten days of the first vote in compliance with the prevailing regulations, but commission chairman Hasyim Asy’ari said it would have been impossible for a revote to be held within that time frame in Kuala Lumpur, citing logistical issues.
Despite the delay, the KPU must finish the voting and vote tabulation process in Kuala Lumpur before March 20, when it must announce election results.
Recurring problem
It was not the first time the KPU had to organize a revote in Kuala Lumpur because of allegations of election fraud.
Read also: Vote tabulation begins amid ethics probe, complaints
In the 2019 general election, the KPU held a revote for some 300,000 voters in the city, after the discovery of thousands of ballots marked for certain candidates were displayed in shophouses three days before voting took place.
Kuala Lumpur is the city with the largest number of Indonesian voters abroad, with almost 500,000 people on the voter roll for the 2024 presidential and legislative elections. Migrant workers make up most of the registered voters.
Labor rights group Migrant Care previously suspected that there were also crime syndicates that stole ballot papers from postal boxes in Malaysia and sold them.
Migrant Care executive director Wahyu Susilo said that he had advised the KPU to scrap postal voting in Malaysia since 2009 to prevent vote-rigging but to no avail.