The General Election Commission Role of Political Communication in Preventing Absent Voters in Sragen Regency

摘要

The phenomenon of absent voters has emerged since the New Order era and has continued to shade the Election Commission during the national and local elections' processes. This study aims to explain the factors behind the phenomenon of absent voters in Sragen regency during the election. The research used qualitative method. It was conducted by using the case study approach, while the data were collected from in-depth interviews, documentation, records, and archives from KPU (General Election Commission) during the 2015 Sragen Election. Based on the absent voters' data, the names of the latter were identified and a sample of them were selected as informants. The data were analyzed by using interactive methods from Miles and Huberman (1992). The analysis results were based on Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) theory that influences voting in the election, among which are: 1) the voters' effort to disseminate the information given by KPU starting from the preparation stage of the election, 2) the information given by KPU were not equally distributed. The writer's suggestions and recommendations include: 1) KPU to socialize the election more properly, 2) Socialization budget to ease the information dissemination needs to be addressed by the government.