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Comment by FabHK | Hacker News Reader

Given the normal Indonesian death rate of 0.64%/a, one would expect, of the 7m people involved, about 123 to die every day.

So, the article really ought to have put that into context, and specify over which period they died.

(Note, as an aside, that UK, USA, and, say, Germany, have significantly higher death rates - the reason being the older population, presumably.)

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I would expect people counting votes to have a below-average natural death rate. Anyone who is about to die to pre-existing conditions is probably not counting votes, and it should be a low-danger job.

Young people with jobs might be less likely to count votes. At the extreme, if you believe you are about to die and want to leave maximum money to your family, counting votes was a sound strategy (due to the benefit paid to families).

And it is low danger but not as low danger as staying home. Many would commute by motorcycle in the open air, much of which is heavily polluted, and staying home would ensure they stick to routines of drinking water and resting during the hottest times.

And one would imagine that poll workers would have some minimum age, increasing the death rate over the average.

I would imagine that poll workers have a minimum age. Their death rate is going to be substantially below, not above, the average, because most deaths are due to (complications associated with) old age and that population is very unlikely to be working counting votes.

Is that accurate for Indonesia? I haven't looked into it deeply, but they have a relatively low median life expectancy and the mortality rate under 60[1] is quite high.

[1] https://knoema.com/atlas/Indonesia/topics/Demographics/Morta...

FWIW, I got it from the CIA World Factbook [1]. The UN [2] has a crude death rate of 7.1, leading to 136 deaths (of 7m) per day. It's all in the same ballpark.

To see whether it's abnormal or not, one would have to examine the age profile of the volunteers and crunch the numbers.

The uncritical reporting is quite disappointing. I mean, more than 1000 people died in New York in the week following the Indonesian election. Someone please look into that!!!!1!!1!

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

[2] https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publicatio...

> old age and that population is very unlikely to be working counting votes.

Why do you think so? Here, election committees are stereotypically composed of retirees that have nothing better to do...

Yeah, but they're people looking for something to do, unlike hospice patients.

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