Equal weightage in votes can be achieved

Opposition leaders and analysts say it is possible to achieve a "one man, one vote, one value" in the upcoming redelineation process.

PKR vice-president N. Surendran said that a bi-partisan parliamentary select committee (PSC) should be formed to oversee the redelineation process and ensure that issues such as gerrymandering do not occur.

"What we're saying is there must be proportionality. We are talking about addressing imbalances in electorate size where we do not have huge disparity such as Putrajaya (15,000 voters) and Kapar (150,000 voters)," he told theSun.

Surendran said a large constituency like Kapar could possibly be "broken up" into Kapar Timur or Kapar Barat as an option in ensuring that this disparity is reduced.

He was responding to a news portal report quoting Election Commission (EC) chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof that it would be "virtually impossible" to make it "one man, one vote, one value", citing geographical and logistical concerns.

Nevertheless, Abdul Aziz said the EC would try its best to ensure each vote will have similar weightage.

However, PAS supreme council member Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad was cynical saying that EC must first resolve the scandal over the indelible ink used in the 13th general elections (GE 13).

"The EC first must ensure that 'one man can vote one time' even before going in to the redelineation process. In GE13, there were seven names on the electoral roll in Temerloh who had voted in advance but their names were not struck off from the master roll at the polling station," he said, adding that the EC must find a workable design in the redelineation process to ensure that it best reflects fair and equitable representation.

DAP national organising secretary Anthony Loke said EC should look towards the Boundary Commission of England (BCE) to study how an equal weight can be given to each vote. BCE is an independent public body which reviews the parliamentary constituencies there every five years.

"A rural constituency can be as small as 30,000 and an urban constituency as big as 80,000. What we want is a fixed weightage between the rural and urban vote," Loke said, adding that a PSC should be formed to achieve this.

Bersih 2.0 steering committee member Dr Wong Chin Huat said there are electoral systems all over the world which can prove that equal weightage is possible

He said the EC have not adhered to the provisions within the federal constitution, especially with regards to the Thirteenth Schedule, Part 1, Section 2.

"Each constituency in a state ought to be approximately equal except that, having regard to the greater difficulty of reaching electors in the country's districts and the other disadvantages facing rural constituencies, a measure of weightage ought to be given to such constituencies," he said.

This means that rural seats may have smaller electorate size even though they may be larger geographically.

However, even then, the EC has flouted the constitution, claimed Wong.

Wong, who is also a political analyst, said in the recent 2013 polls, the state seat of Sri Serdang which falls under the parliamentary seat of Puchong had 72,845 voters while the Kinrara state seat, also under Puchong, has only 34,290 voters.

"Sri Serdang is definitely more 'rural' than Kinrara and yet it has more voters.

"In Baling, Kedah, which is a rural area, the electorate size is 93,000, while Alor Star, an urban area, has 69,000 voters. The EC is not accurate when they say rural votes carry more weight," he said.

He added that this lopsidedness ends up "punishing" the electorate in those areas, where they become severely unrepresented simply because of the delineation of constituencies, which favour one party over the other.

- theSun