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Seventy-one people have so far died from exhaustion following the world’s largest single-day election in Indonesia last week, according to the government. Some 4,000 others fell sick between Feb 14 and Feb 18 due to fatigue after helping run the Feb 14 election, Hasyim Asy’ari, chairman of the nation’s poll body said in a press conference in Jakarta on Monday.
The latest election still claimed dozens of lives even after the government imposed an age cap for volunteers and mandated health checks after more than 500 polling station workers died following the 2019 vote.
What is going on there, Indonesia? That’s abnormal to say the least. These are not groupings of words you would expect to be seeing outside of like an election being held during a civil war or something.
They are in the middle of summer down there, so that doesn’t help… but you’re not wrong in that those numbers are way, WAY too high
Based on the article, it sounds like dying of exhaustion is par for the course when it comes to elections in Indonesia; does anyone have any insight into why that happens? If the current process is so treacherous, are there calls to make it safer?
It sounds like a lot of the volunteers are older people or people who are sick enough that they can’t work, so they’re already at risk. I know in the US, election volunteers are mostly older retired folks, but in my area elections happen in cooler months and in air conditioned buildings, so there’s not much danger of exhaustion.
This seems like an entirely plausible explanation, thank you.
Those are mostly volunteers. The work takes multiple weeks so a big proportion of the volunteers are retirees because people with jobs can only help during their free time. The work itself is physically demanding: preparing the venue, preparing the ballots, sending out invitations, then right after the election is closed, there is an expectation to finish counting and report the result on the same day because everyone is itching to know who’s the winner, so in large neighborhood the volunteers might not be home till morning. Also, in this election you cast 5 ballot papers per voter, which means more works for the volunteers. The counting process is slow because it must be witnessed by multiple people.
It will be vastly easier if the ballot can be cast electronically with a machine instead of with a paper. The volunteers need only to worry about preparing the venue then.
Me before reading article:" WTF?" Me after reading the article:“WTF?”
Hey, maybe space your election out a bit more rather than trying to squeeze it all into one day, come up with like - a different process.
Here’s a pitch; have a long weekend just for the election.
