Ballot boxes in troubled waters

Indonesia’s presidential polls faced a logistical setback when thousands of ballot boxes in a warehouse were damaged by floods.

Thousands of ballot boxes were damaged in Cirebon, West Java, after water submerged the room they were stored in, marking the latest logistical problem ahead of legislative and presidential elections to be held in April.

Heavy rain flooded a warehouse of the Cirebon Elections Commission, soaking more than 1,400 of the cardboard-made boxes.

A total of 14,000 ballot boxes assembled a few days earlier were stacked in the storage room. They were part of 28,000 ballot boxes allotted for the upcoming election in the regency of Cirebon.

West Java Election Monitoring Agency monitoring division coordinator Zaki Hilmi attributed the damage to improper storage by the election organiser.

“There should have been some wooden separator between the boxes and the floor so that water would not reach the boxes,” he said.

About 192.8 million people are expected to vote when the country holds legislative and presidential elections on April 17.

The General Elections Commission has prepared more than four million ballot boxes and about 2.1 million voting booths to be distributed across the country.