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The General Elections Commission on Thursday denied allegations that it had overspent on electronic vote counting technology that failed to work.

The Indonesian Monitoring Organization, a joint body of election watchdogs, has alleged that the elections commission, also known as the KPU, spent Rp 234 billion ($23 million) on the flawed system, though the KPU itself put the figure at under Rp 50 billion.

“We acquired it by using the standard procedures,” said Suripto Bambang Setiadi, secretary general of the elections commission .

“The procedure to provide the equipment was in-line with regulations,” he added.

“We also implemented the procurement method required by the 2003 presidential decree.”

The KPU also drew the attention of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) after the failure of its billion-rupiah electronic vote-counting system used in the legislative elections last April.

The commission purchased a program, Intelligent Character Recognition, which was supposed to scan ballots at the local level and send the results back to the central office in Jakarta over the Internet.

However, less than 20 percent of ballots were counted by the system and posted on the KPU’s Web site.

The problem has been blamed on the computer operators’ lack of experience, scanner incompatibility with the software and faulty software.

KPU member Abdul Aziz, who was responsible for overseeing the procurement of the program, said that he bore no responsibility for the procurement process, blaming Bambang, the commission’s secretary general.

Bambang, however, said that the blame lay with local elections commissions, also known as KPUD.

“We only provided the network here,” Bambang said. “Meanwhile, other equipment, such as scanners were bought by the KPUD.”

The KPK has investigated the allegations against the KPUDs in some areas as well as questioned the KPU over the discrepancies in technology’s cost.

Meanwhile, the commission itself has not yet conducted an evaluation on the procure ment process .

“After the legislative elections, we had to immediately prepare for the presidential election,” Bambang said. “We had no time to carry out the evaluation.”