More than 270 election workers died in Indonesia, because of long hours involved in counting the ballot papers. The officers complained of fatigue related illness due to the over work done by them in the counting of the votes. Arief Priyo Susanto, the spokes person of the General Election Commission said that 1,878 other staff members had fallen ill.
The total number of people monitoring the elections conducted on 17th April in Indonesia was about 7 million. The staff was expected to work in sweltering heat, which took a hefty toll on their physical condition. The counting of the ballot papers became a tedious task as 193 million people voted in more than 800,000 polling booths.
The Indian opposition on the other hand has demanded the return of the ballot paper system in a country which is almost twice as large as Indonesia. Congress on various occasions has requested the Election Commission to bring back the paper ballot system. The opposition party said that there were technical problems with the EVM machines and that paper ballot should be used in the Lok Sabha 2019 elections.
Congress wrote to the EC demanding the ballot paper system. The opposition was unable to estimate that a country with such a huge population cannot go back to a regressive electoral procedure after using EVMs for more than a decade. India with a total of 900 million eligible voters voting in approximately 10 lakh polling booths cannot go back to the paper ballot system. The opposition, mainly Congress seemed to blow its demands out of proportion.
The opposition parties knew that they would not be able to fight against the NDA government and so they found reasons to prove that the EVMs were flawed and there was a need for the paper ballots to return. The news of elections in Indonesia clearly shows that the paper ballot system takes toll on the health of the officers involved in the election work.
Congress claimed that 70% of the opposition had demanded the ballot paper system. They even complained that BJP’s name was appearing instead of its symbol on the electronic voting machines. The EC quashing all these claims by the Congress and other opposition parties said that EVMs were here to stay and no reversal of the procedure would take place.
The huge population of Indian voters discarded the method of election running on the ballot paper system. Indonesia has become proof that officers suffer health issues if they are made to over work in the election process. It also shows how big democracies like India cannot adopt the system after successfully carrying out electronic voting for a decade. However, the opposition in India doesn’t seem to understand these calculations and estimations. They are more concerned about finding loopholes in the electoral process than encouraging technological advancement in voting methods.
