Once the Election Commission (EC) makes its proposal for new electoral boundaries, members of the public who seek an overview of the changes may have to resort to photographing maps displayed in every constituency affected.

This is the concern raised by the electoral reform group Tindak Malaysia, after making inquiries to the EC about purchasing the maps.

Tindak Malaysia founder PY Wong told Malaysiakini that his NGO was informed that the new maps would not be sold to public until the new boundaries have been gazetted - which will be too late for members of the public to file objections.

He argued that it is important for voters to see not only the changes being made to their constituencies, but also to the other constituencies in their states.

“Remember that in the Federal Constitution, equalisation is one of the key principles. When you talk about ‘equalisation’, it is a comparative term.

“You must compare with the next constituency, and then next. By the time you finish, (you have covered) the whole state,” Wong ( left ) said when contacted on Friday.

He was referring to Article 2(c) of the 13th Schedule of the constitution, which provides for, among others, that “the number of electors within each constituency in a state ought to be approximately equal”.

Impact from seats of vastly unequal sizes

When constituencies are of vastly unequal sizes, the phenomena is referred to as ‘malapportionment’ and gives smaller electoral districts disproportionate power in putting lawmakers into office.

This raised public outcry following the 13th general election last year, when BN won 133 out of 222 parliamentary seats and formed the federal government, despite garnering only 47.4 percent of the popular vote.

Yesterday, Tindak Malaysia launched its new website where digital electoral maps of Malaysia are available to the public for the first time, alongside its proposal for more equitable electoral boundaries.

With that groundwork being laid, a source familiar with Tindak Malaysia’s mapping effort told Malaysiakini that it is prepared to purchase new maps from the EC as soon as its proposal is made public and the clock starts ticking on the 30-day public consultation period.

The law allows for state governments, local authorities, and groups of at least 100 voters in their constituencies to make objections if they are unhappy with the EC’s proposals.

Within a week, Tindak Malaysia plans to digitalise the maps, calculate to what extent voters are evenly distributed under the new electoral boundary proposals, and to make the NGO’s own proposal.

This would leave voters three weeks to evaluate the EC’s proposal based on Tindak Malaysia’s analysis, as well as to adopt the NGO’s proposed electoral boundaries if it is deemed to be a better alternative.

However, it will all be moot if...

If the EC releases digital maps instead of paper maps as Tindak Malaysia had urged for, the process can be shorted to about two days instead of a week, the source said.

However, all these preparations would be moot if the commission is not selling the new maps at its state offices until these have been gazetted.

“We have a new challenge now. We have to go to every constituency to take photographs, so we are going to need a lot of photographers to help us. It is going to be a huge challenge.

“The scale of the difficulty has increased ten-fold. Originally, we just needed to spend money and go to the state capitals to buy the maps.

“Now, even if you have money, you can’t get the maps,” Wong lamented.

He added that Tindak Malaysia’s role is to help the EC facilitate public access to information, and hopes that the Election Commission would live up to its slogan of ‘competency and transparency’.

“We are not asking anything more than that,” he said.