KINIGUIDE The Election Commission (EC) finally posted an official notice on the redelineation exercise on Thursday, officially kicking off the much anticipated process of electoral boundary changes for Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia.

In this instalment of KiniGuide, we dwell into the redelineation process and take a look at some of the problems that have cropped up in the past.

What is redelineation?

Every corner of Malaysian territory is part of one of 222 parliamentary constituencies, which are further subdivided into two or more state constituencies, which in turn are divided into polling districts and finally, voting localities.

Each parliamentary constituency is represented by a member of Parliament at the Dewan Rakyat, and each state constituency is represented by a state assemblyperson at its respective state legislature.

A redelineation exercise is essentially a review of the territory encompassed by these constituencies to see if its boundaries are still relevant for the current times and make changes to the boundaries, if necessary.

This could entail moving voters from one constituency to another, or even the creation of new constituencies or removal of existing constituencies.

Why should I care?

There had been allegations in the past that the redelineation process had been abused to favour one party over another in an election.

One was through malapportionment. This entails having vast differences between the number of voters from one constituency to another. This is unfair because it dilutes the value of voters in larger constituencies in favour of those voting in smaller ones.

An example of this can be seen in the EC’s proposal for the parliamentary constituencies of Selangor.

Under the proposal, Damansara would have 150,439 voters, which is four times more the number of voters in Sabak Bernam (37,126 voters) – a difference of more than 400 percent. The international best practice is to keep such discrepancies to within 20 percent of the average number of voters.

Another way to skew election results through the redelineation process is through gerrymandering.

This entails the redrawing of electoral boundaries to concentrate the supporters of one party in a handful of constituencies, while shifting supporters of an opposing party into many more other constituencies. This can result in some oddly shaped constituency boundaries.

A video explaining gerrymandering can be found here.

One way these two problems have manifested can be seen in the 13th general election.

The Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition garnered 51 percent of the popular vote in the 13th general election in 2013, but only won 40 percent of the parliamentary seats and was unable to form the government.

What are some of the proposed changes?

In total, the boundaries of 128 out of 222 parliamentary constituencies would be changed. The top three states affected are Johor (21 constituencies), Selangor (18 constituencies), and Perak (17 constituencies). Kuala Lumpur and Terengganu would also see all the parliamentary constituency boundaries altered...