More than 270 workers dead after Indonesian election

As of Saturday night, 272 election officers were dead and another 1,878 were sick after working to carry out the Indonesian election, according to CNN Indonesia.Indonesia’s election, held on April 17, was billed as one of the most complicated single-day ballots ever undertaken. For the first time, Indonesia held its presidential and legislative elections on the same day, with around 192.8 million people across the archipelago’s 17,000 islands eligible to vote. More than 800,000 polling stations and 6 million election workers helped pull it off.Arief Priyo Susanto, spokesman of the General Elections Commission, known as the KPU, said the election officials had mostly died from overwork-related illnesses, according to CNN-affiliate SBS.According to CNN Indonesia’s report, General Elections Commission chief Arief Budiman acknowledged the officers had been overworked. He said that was partly due to the tight timeline to deliver the election results, and the decision to hold the presidential and legislative elections simultaneously. KPU has come under fire for how it managed the elections.Sandiaga Uno, the running mate of presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, said fundamental mistakes had been made in how the election was implemented.”If the victims continue to fall, there is something fundamentally very wrong,” he said, according to CNN Indonesia.Early results indicated that incumbent Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had secured a second term, winning the presidency for a second time against longtime rival Prabowo. Prabowo initially claimed that alternative polls by his own team put him in the lead.Early “quick counts” of the ballots put Jokowi around 55% of the vote, with Prabowo winning around 44%. “Quick counts” are conducted by a variety of credible polling agencies and have proved reliable in the past. Final official results will be announced by May 22.