Jakarta, Narator.co – The General Election Commission (KPU) acknowledged on Monday that technical issues in the optical character recognition (OCR) system of its vote counting machine resulted in data misinterpretations, causing delays in the consolidation of votes from the presidential and legislative elections held on February 14.
According to KPU Commissioner Betty Epsilon Idroos, the technical issues affected 1,223 polling stations nationwide, constituting 0.2 percent of the 586,646 polling stations that transmitted their results from the presidential election to the KPU. The general elections encompassed over 820,000 polling stations across all 38 provinces.
Election officials utilized an OCR-assisted app on their cellphones to interpret information from photos of hand-counted ballot papers taken at every polling station. The results were then tabulated and made available on the KPU’s vote counting web portal, known as “Sirekap.”
The problem arose when the OCR-assisted app misinterpreted data from the hand-counted ballot papers, resulting in discrepancies on the Sirekap platform. Correcting misread data proved challenging, as polling station officials were not authorized to make immediate corrections.
Betty explained, “Polling station officials can report data discrepancies on the Sirekap website, but they aren’t authorized to make corrections. Mistaken data is flagged and subsequently corrected by the KPU office at the regency and municipal levels on the Sirekap web platform.”
In the legislative election, data discrepancies affected 4,167 polling stations. The KPU clarified that the Sirekap website serves to disseminate information to the public and is not the official tool for vote counting.
The official vote tally undergoes tabulation and certification in a hierarchical system, starting from the districts, regencies, cities, and provinces up to the national level. Votes cast abroad are certified by authorized representatives before being submitted for national certification. Ultimately, the data published on the Sirekap website will be adjusted to align with the certified results.”
(Red)