Bawaslu Asks KPU Not Only Rely On Sirekap When Counting Pilkada Votes

JAKARTA - The Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) has asked the KPU not only to use an electronic recapitulation system called the Vote Recapitulation Information System (Sirekap) in the 2020 Pilkada vote counting process.

Although Sirekap has been simulated several times, in a hearing between the DPR, government, KPU, and Bawaslu it is agreed that Sirekap is only a tool for counting vote recapitulation.

Considering that there are regulations requiring the use of Sirekap in the 2020 Pilkada, Bawaslu asked the KPU not to position Sirekap in the unified vote recapitulation process.

"Bawaslu needs to ask the KPU to position Sirekap not in a unified recapitulation process, but as a tool to make it easier for the public to get access to the publication of vote count results," said Bawaslu member Fritz Edward Siregar at the Bawaslu building, Central Jakarta, Friday, December 4.

Fritz asked the KPU to use the official report and certificate of vote count results and manual recapitulation as the main basis for the recapitulation of election vote count results.

Furthermore, the KPU needs to prepare anticipatory mitigation steps in the event that Sirekap does not work. However, the way is by not doing recapitulation in other places that have networks.

"This will potentially increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission and lead to lack of legal certainty," he said.

In addition, Fritz asked the KPU to prepare an alternative vote count and a recapitulation of the vote acquisition results if Sirekap could not be used so that other procedures could be used.

"Bawaslu believes that there should be room for manual recapitulation as an anticipatory mitigation if Sirekap does not work," he concluded.

Therefore, the KPU will immediately undertake an alternative to manual counting by preparing Excel files and forms considering that the time is getting closer to providing certainty.

For information, Sirekap is an application that will be used by officials of the polling organization (KPPS) to calculate the results of the election votes held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In its use, the official vote recapitulation result (C1-KWK) sheet that has been filled with the votes will be scanned in the Sirekap application via the KPPS cellphone.

The Sirekap application will display the data from the C1-KWK input process. The KPPS officer then sends the photo results to the witness and the TPS supervisor in the form of a QR code.

The data is then aggregated from each TPS to sub-districts, sub-districts, to regencies / cities in the election for mayor / regent, or forwarded to the provincial level for gubernatorial elections.