Video of 'illegal voters' from Indonesia's 2019 polls falsely shared as case of election fraud in 2024

Published on March 1, 2024 at 12:35
3 min read
By AFP Indonesia

A five-year-old video has recently resurfaced with a false claim that it shows a case of voter fraud in Makassar, a city in South Sulawesi province, on the day of Indonesia's general elections in February 2024. The clip in fact shows two men who were detained for allegedly trying to vote using someone else's identity in Makassar during elections in 2019.

"Viral, illegal voters in Makassar," reads Indonesian-language text on a clip viewed more than 580,000 times since it was posted on video-sharing platform SnackVideo on February 14, 2024.

The post's caption shares an Indonesian-language hashtag that says: "Info on 2024 General Elections".

The clip, which is around four-and-a-half minutes long, shows a man yelling at several people in a house. "Where is Bawaslu?" he asks, referring to Indonesia's General Election Supervisory Agency.

"I will report you! ... How dare you commit fraud!"

Screenshot of the false post, captured on February 23, 2024

The post was shared as tens of millions of Indonesians went to the polls to elect the country's president and legislators in one of the world's biggest one-day elections.

Although final official results are not due until late March 2024, preliminary tallies on the election commission's website from February 28 show Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto with a commanding lead over rivals Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo (archived link).

Both Anies and Ganjar have said, without yet providing evidence, that their camps had found "systematic" fraud in the vote and "the deficiencies are various". Several election monitoring groups have also alleged election fraud across the country (archived link).

The video circulated alongside a similar claim elsewhere on SnackVideo here, and on Facebook here and here, racking up more than 26,000 views. It was also shared more than 2,600 times after it was posted on X here and here.

While the video does depict fraudulent election activity, it was not taken during the 2024 elections.

2019 incident

A reverse image search on Google, followed by a keyword search, found a similar video was published by local news outlet Tribun Timur on its verified YouTube channel on April 19, 2019 (archived link).

The five-minute, 46-second clip is titled: "Rappocini police arrest head of local poll station workers and two illegal voters."

According to the Tribun Timur report, local police arrested the head of a polling station in Rappocini district, Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province, and two men from Flores, an island in East Nusa Tenggara province.

The two young men were detained after they showed up at the local polling station with polling cards -- known in Indonesia as "C6" forms or invitations to vote -- that belonged to other registered voters, said Rappocini police chief Edy Supriyadi (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip in the misleading post (left) and the Tribun Timur video from 2019 (right):

Screenshot comparison of the clip in the misleading post (left) and the Tribun Timur video from 2019 (right)

The incident took place when Indonesia held presidential and legislative elections on April 17, 2019.

A shorter clip was published by Makassar-based news outlet Media Sulsel on April 19, 2019 (archived link).

Indonesian news agency Antara included a photo of the three detained men as part of a report published on April 19, 2019 (archived link).

The Antara report said local residents became suspicious when the two men showed up at the polling station with voting invitations that belonged to two women. The polling station head later admitted that he allowed the two men to use other people's polling cards to vote.

AFP has previously debunked other misinformation related to Indonesia's 2024 elections here.

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail