Managing Indonesian Head of Local Government Elections During the COVID-19 Pandemic Period

Abstract

This paper briefly analyses how managing the head of local government elections (Pilkada) in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Three critical aspects in the electoral management framework are the decision-making process, service outputs, and service outcomes framed in the Indonesian case. This paper argues that debatable arguments on the postponement decisions of Pilkada, conducive political environments in legislative and executive relations contribute to the difficulty of decision making of the exact date of Pilkada. Meanwhile, the implementation of Pilkada was a success because of strong political support from the national government. Some findings of this paper are: first, decision making for conducting the Pilkada 2020 was politically uneasy; second, good quality of service outputs from Pilkada 2020 was signed by convenience dimension which can be captured by voter compliance on health protocols in the polling station; third, the best evaluation for service outcomes is coming from the high percentage of voters turn out that need to explore more on that phenomena.