Hanging Chads in Jakarta

Indonesia's first direct Presidential election is in chaos because of a faulty ballot. You remember faulty ballots, right?

Indonesia's election authority last night ordered a nationwide recount of votes as the country's first direct presidential election descended into confusion over millions of votes wrongly declared invalid.

The Election Commission held an emergency meeting after receiving scores of calls from confused officials who reported thousands of invalid votes soon after counting began. Officials on the ground reported that in some booths, invalid votes outnumbered the votes received by the most popular candidates.

In Indonesian elections, voters use a nail to punch a hole in the face of their preferred candidate and only those ballot papers with one hole are declared valid. However, the ballot papers used yesterday were a folded sheet of paper which did not need to be opened fully for voters to see all five candidates. That meant millions of voters punched a hole that went through their preferred candidate and on through another part of the ballot paper containing voting information. Many of those votes were initially declared invalid.

A couple thoughts about this. First of all, isn't it amazing that Indonesia, a country with a dubious history of repression and brutality, in its first-ever Presidential election, actually has an Election Commission, which apparently worked very quickly to order a recount after noticing the problem? Contrast that with our system, which has no independent Election Commission, and relies on court challenges to unentangle messy elections. Good thing Indonesia doesn't have a partisan Supreme Court to decide these things. Who knows, they may even get the right result!

Also, this has to be worrisome, especially when you consider that voters use a NAIL:

Like the month-long election campaign, voting yesterday was free of any violence, but Mr Yudhoyono warned that might change if he or another candidate failed to win more than 50 per cent in the first round, in which case a run-off between the top two candidates would have to be held in September.

"There will be two candidates facing each other, there will be a head-to-head competition, and surely this will be rough," he told reporters before voting amid an adoring crowd of supporters.

"Supporters will face each other and there is the potential for confrontation. This is unavoidable. The key is for the candidates and the supporters to restrain themselves."

Might want to change that nail to a marker, guys.