Registering Voters, Increasing Participation in the 2024 Election

Ensuring the right to vote for citizens and voters to exercise their right to vote on voting day will be two factors that will also determine the quality of holding elections.

The following article was translated using both Microsoft Azure Open AI and Google Translation AI.

List of Final Voters Election 2024 was established by the General Elections Commission last week. Voter data collection will remain on the agenda to guarantee citizens' constitutional rights. In addition to data collection, increasing voter participation is also homework for all parties, especially for election organizers.

The Permanent Voter List (DPT) has been determined by the General Elections Commission (KPU ) last week. The total number of voters who have the right to vote in the 2024 elections has reached 204,807,222. This number has increased by around 12 million voters compared to the 2019 election.

This increase is due to the growth in Indonesia's population over the past five years, including the increase in the number of eligible voters, such as those who have reached the minimum age of 17 or are already/ever married.

According to the KPU's statement, the final voter list (DPT) has gone through a lengthy verification process. The preparation of this voter list involved voter registration officers and its recapitulation was done in stages by the KPU from the district/city level, provincial level, until it is finalized at the national level by the KPU RI.

The KPU itself has stated that for citizens who are eligible to vote but have not been listed in the DPT, they can be registered as special voters. However, this registration is important to ensure the constitutional rights of citizens to be able to exercise their right to vote in the elections.

However, the challenge of data collection is not easy. One of them is the enthusiasm of the public in overseeing the voter data collection process. Kompas Research and Development has recorded in its opinion poll how the public tends to be less active in checking whether their names have been included in the voter list or not. More than a third of the respondents admitted that they did not check the KPU voter data page.

This is in line with Kompas Research and Development poll in mid-January, where 43.2 percent of respondents said they were on the voter list for the 2024 election but did not confirm whether their name was in the link voter checks provided by the KPU. Some of the other respondents even admitted that they did not know whether their names had been included in the voter list or not.

This signals that the active system policy for voters to independently verify, and even actively register if their name is not yet on the voter list, is not being carried out enthusiastically by the voters.

Voters tend to be passive and rely on the voter data verification (coklit) activities carried out by the election organizers in the field, or just believing that their names are already included in the list because in previous elections and regional elections, they have been proven to be registered as voters.

Also read: Competition for Electoral Seats in General Elections is Narrowing

Competition level

On the other hand, the released data of fixed voters by the KPU will become an object of analysis for the competition map for the contestants who will compete in the election, especially for the legislative candidates.

When viewed from the number of voters in the voter list which reached 204 million and compared to the 580 seats contested in the DPR, a legislative candidate who intends to win a seat in the DPR requires the support of 353,115 voters.

Certainly, to gain support from voters is not easy because a candidate for a legislative member will also compete with thousands of other candidates.

The data shows that the total number of legislative candidates for the DPR reaches 10,323 candidates spread across 84 electoral districts (dapil) in Indonesia. Of the total legislative candidates, when compared to the 580 seats that will be contested at the national level, a legislative candidate must compete with 17-18 other candidates.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

The electronic countdown board for the implementation of the election at the KPU office in Jakarta, Sunday (9/7/2023).

Certainly this is a general scheme of competition at the national level. Ultimately, the competition scheme will depend on the level of competition in the electoral districts.

Referring to the voter list set by the KPU last week, the majority of voters are concentrated in Java. It can be said that the level of competition is sharper in this region, especially in larger pockets of voters.

This was recorded from the voter list (DPT) which stated that more than half of the voters (56 percent) came from six provinces on the island of Java, namely West Java, East Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta Special Region, DKI Jakarta, and Banten. Naturally, the level of competition to win votes in Java will remain tighter compared to other regions.

The increasingly intense competition for voters' votes in Java was also recorded from the results of Kompas's R&D analysis of the distribution of seats.

As a result, the competition has become increasingly tight, meaning that not many political parties have won seats in the electoral districts. One of them is the electoral district with many seats, most of which are located in Java due to the relatively larger number of voters.

Let's say, for example, a constituency with 9 seats that experienced a decline in competition level. In the 2014 election, on average, there were 4-9 political parties that won seats in this constituency. However, in the 2019 election, it tended to decrease to only 3-9 political parties.

The same thing happened in the constituency with 10 seats. In this area, the opportunities for political parties are also narrowing. In the 2014 election, an average of 7-10 parties managed to win 10 seats, but in the 2019 election, it decreased to 7-8 political parties. This means that there is no longer a constituency of 10 seats with an equal distribution to 10 political parties.

From the analysis of the electoral districts above, it appears that there is a trend where some parties have managed to obtain more than one seat in the electoral district with 10 seats. This means that the chances of other parties to win a seat are becoming narrower. This indicates that the level of competition is becoming more intense, especially in Java where there are many electoral districts that have more than 5 seats.

Also read: R&D Analysis ”Kompas”: The Role of Parties in Building Voter Participation

Participation

In the end, besides understanding the comparison of the number of contestants, voters, seats, and the level of competition, another equally important factor is to ensure that voters come to the polling stations on February 14, 2024. The high number of voters in a constituency will not provide incentives if not accompanied by a high level of participation.

If we follow the track record of the 2019 elections, there seems to be a breath of fresh air in the trend of increasing voter participation. In the first nationwide simultaneous elections, the average level of participation (legislative and presidential elections) reached 81 percent. This result exceeded the target set by the KPU at that time, which was 77.5 percent.

Now, in the 2024 election, the KPU has raised the target for participation to reach 79.5 percent, which is expected to be achieved with the experience gained in the 2019 election. One opportunity that can be expected to boost participation rates is by energizing first-time and young voters who relatively dominate in the upcoming election.

This refers to the voter registration data that has been released by the KPU in determining the voter list. It is noted that the majority of voters fall into the category of 40 years and below, which amounts to around 52 percent of the voters.

The details are as follows, voters under 17 years of age are 0.003 percent, the 17-30 age group is 31.23 percent, the 31-40 age group is 20.70 percent, and above 40 years of age is 48.07 percent.

Referring to Kompas's R&D survey, the enthusiasm of young and first-time voters to exercise their right to vote is relatively high, with more than 80 percent admitting that they will exercise their right to vote in the next general election. However, these early and young voters have the potential to become swing voters, aka floating voters, depending on the attractiveness of the election itself.

It is at this point that it becomes homework, not only for the organizers, but also the contestants, to offer something interesting to voters so that they are able to encourage first-time and young voters to be motivated to participate in elections by exercising their right to vote in the voting booth later. (COMPAS R&D)

Also read: Verification Becomes Initial Test for Candidates for the 2024 Election