Election Governance Based on Public Participation in Indonesia

Abstract

This article discusses election governance based on public participation with qualitative research methods, the approach used in case studies in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) Province, the region is one of thirty-four provinces in Indonesia. Governance is an approach that is considered relevant, because election governance is its manifestation. The results show that the Regional of General Election Commission of NTB as the authority of election organizers succeeded in building a model of election governance based on public participation through three strategies, namely the movement to protect suffrage, family-based voter education, and voter education based on educational institutions. These three models are designed through three approaches, namely multi-stakeholder partnership, convergence, safety and public health of disaster areas. The methods of implementation include; short videos about elections, consistent use of mass media and continuous election classes. The impact of the public participation-based election governance model in NTB is that the number of public participations in 2019 Elections increased to 82 percent compared to 2014 Election of 77.32 percent where the model has not been implemented. The obstacles faced in building participatory-based election governance are two, namely; the issue of legitimacy provided by the Electoral Law and has not been made the education of voters as core business of General Commission Election, while voter education is an effective instrument in developing public participation. The solution is necessary to change article 3 and article 15 (Presiden Republik Indonesia, 2017) on the elections to include participation as the principle of organizing elections. In addition, voter education should be the core business from the national to the regions.