Penang Institute’s Simple Guide to the Election Commission’s Constituency Delimitation Review Report for the States of Malaya


The Election Commission (EC)’s final recommendations for the delimitation of parliamentary and state constituencies in the States of Malaya was tabled in Parliament on 22 March 2018, and a draft parliamentary order to bring the recommendations in force was debated and voted upon on 28 March 2018.

The Dewan Rakyat officially passed the motion, with 129 votes for and 80 against. This resulted in a number of changes in polling stations and parliamentary seats across all states in the peninsular, namely Johor, Selangor, and Perak. In total, 98 of 185 seats the peninsular have reportedly had their boundaries redrawn.

Penang Institute’s researchers, who have worked on constituency delimitation for more than five years, produced a simple guide on how to digest and dissect the report. Included here are state-by-state factsheets with electorate size for all federal and state constituencies in three earlier stages: status quo, 1st recommendations and 2nd recommendations, which were not provided in the report. Hopefully, all these will enable the reader to make a meaningful assessment on whether the EC has carried out its tasks in compliance with the Federal Constitution.

download full paper     download full paper