Jakarta: Ten days after Indonesia held the world's biggest single-day elections, more than 270 election staff have died, mostly of fatigue-related illnesses caused by long hours counting millions of ballot papers by hand, an official says.

The April 17 elections were the first time the country of 260 million people combined the presidential vote with national and regional parliamentary ones, with an aim to cut costs.

Millions of people cast their vote in the election. Credit:Bloomberg

Voting was largely peaceful and was estimated to have drawn 80 per cent of the total 193 million voters, who each had to punch up to five ballot papers in over 800,000 polling stations.

But conducting the eight-hour vote in a country that stretches more than 5000 kilometres from its western to eastern tips proven to be both a Herculean logistical feat and fatal for some officials, who had to count the ballot papers by hand.