Address malapportionment of seats, Bersih 2.0 tells govt
PUCHONG: Electoral watchdog, Bersih 2.0 urged the government today to address the issue of constituency malapportionment to provide Malaysians with fairer representation.
In a statement, Bersih 2.0 said the imbalanced voting constituency sizes was the next area that needs reform after lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.
“The Pakatan manifesto Item 17 stated that there will be a fair ratio in future delimitation exercises and announce transparently to the public the formula being used to determine the number of voters and the size of each constituency.
“The scale of malapportionment of constituencies would now be exacerbated through the lowering of voting age and automatic voters’ registration,” the statement reads.
Malapportionment of voters is a long-standing complaint regarding the Malaysian electoral system, due to its perceived dilution of the value of votes in large constituencies versus smaller ones.
The Federal Constitution in its original form contained a safeguard against this, limiting the difference between the largest and smallest constituencies to no more than 15%.
However, the safeguard was removed by two subsequent amendments to the Constitution.
This has resulted in some federal constituencies containing over 180,000 voters while others may have fewer than 20,000.
Bersih 2.0 also urged the government to withdraw the Bill to add 13 new state seats in Sabah as doing so would prevent a fresh redelineation for another eight years unless the Federal Constitution is again amended
The NGO urged the government to consider reforming the first-past-the-post system currently practised in Malaysian elections for a fairer and more representative format.
Yesterday, MPs from both sides of the aisle voted unanimously to amend the Federal Constitution in order to allow those 18 years and above to vote.
The amendment would also allow 18-year-old to run for public office and for Malaysians to be automatically registered as voters once they become eligible.
