Root cause of problems or solutions for electoral boundaries

 

In the previous article that we have written, we pointed out the deficiency of polling facilities for a constituency. Today, we will like to highlight another hidden deficiency behind every electoral constituency (whether state or Parliament). 

Every constituency is constructed from two or more polling districts (which defines where you vote). 

While we are accustomed to the fact that polling districts get shifted during redelineation, it is important to understand that polling districts ultimately defines fair electoral boundaries. 

Building on three years of research since GE14, we at Tindak Malaysia would like to share our findings on the problematic polling districts and how the Election Commission (EC) could fix them. 

All of our findings and solutions for polling districts have been submitted to EC since GE14.

Polling district: Building block of an electoral constituency

Every Malaysian who is registered as a voter has a complete or incomplete address. These voters are grouped into locality based on their address. 

A locality could be divided into two types: geographical (ie, flat block, road, housing area, village) or non-geographical (absent voter, former police, former military person). 

A group of localities (both geographical and non-geographical) are combined to form a polling district. According to Section 7 of Election Act 1958 and Regulation 3 (2) of Elections (Registration of Electors) Regulations 2002, a polling district is defined as:

1. a separate unit of registration area (parliamentary constituency) of which the electoral roll is divided by polling district (for hardcopy and PDF version).

2. an area assigned with one or more polling centres.

Two or more polling districts form a state constituency and two or more state seats form a parliamentary constituency. As soon as the constituency is formed after redelineation, the constituency shall be divided into polling districts and EC can alter the boundaries of polling districts (ie, formation of new polling districts) when the needs arise. 

Previously known as belah bahagi daerah mengundi (re-division of polling districts), polling district updates, in theory, should bring voters closer to polling centres and smoothen the polling process. 

Within this framework of the law, the formation, maintenance and alteration of polling districts are administrative functions that are carried out by the EC. However, our recent research found out that EC’s work on forming and altering polling districts are riddled with errors and illogical thinking.

Polling district problems

We are accustomed to the problem of malapportionment among our constituencies (severe voter population inequality). While most of us may associate the lumping of many areas into a constituency causing the issue (or as the root cause), we would like to highlight a problem that predates the malapportionment crisis. 

In 2006, EC stipulated that a polling district should not have an electorate (or commonly known as voters) size that is greater than 3850 individuals. 

Today, Malaysia’s largest polling district (Kuala Baram in Miri) has an electorate size of 20,704 voters in 2017 which is far bigger than the entire parliamentary constituency of Igan of 19,639 voters in 2017 (smallest parliamentary constituency of the country). 

How is that the double subset of a parliamentary constituency is bigger than a parliamentary constituency in terms of population? 

Have you wondered why Miri is an oversized parliamentary constituency for Sarawak? The base of polling districts in Miri is just too huge. Polling centres in Kuala Baram are heavily strained to serve a large base of voters.

Have you wondered why our constituencies have funny or irregular shapes? 

Chances are the polling districts were drawn without proper logic or no respect to local ties. 

Despite having all the available information in their systems, EC opted to draw polling districts that do not respect the latest local council or district boundaries even in the middle of the forest. 

This inevitably leads to constituencies purposely going over two local council areas. Sometimes (like in Negeri Sembilan), polling districts drawn from early 2016 have completely illogical boundaries and grouping voters with no common association.

We are now aware that some constituencies are built without enough facilities to be part of polling machinery. Referring to our past example in the previous article, close to 80 percent of Air Putih (Penang) state seat voters had to leave their state constituency and cast their votes in the neighbouring state seats. 

If we refer to Section 7 of Election Act 1958, EC is required to assign a polling centre to a polling district. However, the law is silent on whether the polling centre should be within every polling district. In Penang alone (using GE14 list of polling centres), we found out in 2020 that estimated:

1. 12.8 percent of total voters (124,667) would require to travel outside of their home state seat and cast their ballot in the adjacent state seat.

2. 16.7 percent of total voters (161,644) would be voting in a polling centre that is shared by two or more polling district.

3. 23.6 percent of total voters (228,293) would require to travel to neighbouring polling district (but still in the same state seat) to cast their ballots.

If the polling district is not drawn without consideration of available polling facilities, how do you expect constituencies to comply with one of the key provisions of redelineation guidelines?

There are other problems associated with polling districts like the wrong geographical association of voters (ie, Port Dickson) or electoral roll mismatch (ie, Chini). 

What we have discovered in this topic is just the tip of the iceberg. This brings to the solutions that we need to demand EC to enact.

Forming fair polling districts

Many years ago, we, Tindak Malaysia came out with a comprehensive list of electoral reform proposals and these proposals have been submitted to EC, Electoral Reform Committee (ERC) and Institutional Reform Committee (IRC) after GE14. 

Combining with proposals of the past and our new research (2018-present), we have proposed that a polling district should be constructed in a manner where:

1. It is home to publicly accessible two in-house facilities that can be polling centres.

2. It respects local council or district boundaries and respects microlocal ties (ie, contiguity).

3. Have an electorate population of 2-4 percent of state electoral quota which is an average Parliament constituency electorate size.

4. It must have the correct association of voters to polling districts.

5. It must have meaningful names of the coverage area.

In order to have fair electoral boundaries, the polling districts should be drawn in the above criteria. 

We have submitted these points to EC with clear examples of poor design of polling districts for parliamentary seat Kimanis (Sabah), state seat Luyang (Sabah), parliamentary seat Miri (Sarawak), state seat Saribas (Sarawak), parliament seat Port Dickson (Negeri Sembilan), state seat Rantau (Negeri Sembilan) and state seat Chini (Pahang). 

Our five-point proposal is applicable to any constituency in Malaysia.

Conclusion

We publicly call upon EC to use the powers it has to fix problematic polling districts and keep a list of errors that can only be rectified in the next redelineation. 

We call upon all members of society and non-governmental organisations to lobby EC to identity more facilities for polling centres. 

Similarly, we call upon all Malaysians to lobby all tiers of government (from local council to federal authorities) to ensure all buildings which are used as polling centres are friendly to the elderly and the disabled so that voting is accessible to all. 

Fair polling districts is the basis for equal, accessible and sensible constituencies for all voters. - Mkini

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DANESH PRAKASH CHACKO is Tindak Malaysia’s director and research analyst at the Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development (Sunway University). FORK YOW LEONG is an activist with Tindak Malaysia.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.