KUCHING: A total of 254 new polling districts will be created in the ongoing redelineation exercise in Sarawak, says Election Commission (EC) commissioner Faisal Syam Abdol Hazis.
In a talk hosted by state civil society group Society for Community Empowerment (ROSE) on Tuesday (Sept 8) night, he said the addition would bring the number of polling districts in Sarawak to 1,141.
There are 887 polling districts in the existing 82 state constituencies.
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In July last year, the Sarawak Legislative Assembly passed the Dewan Undangan Negeri (Composition of Membership) Bill approving the increase of elected representatives by 17 to bring the number to 99.
Faisal Syam, who was invited to speak on the process of reviewing the electoral boundaries of the 17 new seats, touched on the EC's guiding principles in drawing the new electoral map, its core proposals, and how Sarawakians can participate in the process, among other matters.
He said the main objective of the exercise was to spread out the voters in bloated constituencies.
"We try to address seats with a large number of voters," he explained.
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The ideal number of voters in any given constituency should not be more than 10,000, he said, but realistically this would not be possible in Sarawak for a number of reasons.
For one, Sarawak now has more than two million voters and if they are to be divided equally among the 99 seats, each seat would have 20,000 voters, he said.
On large seats which needed to be trimmed in the exercise, Faisal pointed to the urban seat of Senadin in Miri that has about 74,000 voters, a whopping 200% of the state average.
Other seats proposed for trimming are the Kuching seats of Tupong (55,000 voters), Pantai Damai (40,000) and Batu Lintang (47,000); as well as the rural Dayak-majority seat of Tasik Biru in Bau (29,000).
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On Tasik Biru, Faisal said 29,000 is a "huge" number of voters for a rural seat.
Meanwhile, Sarawak EC director Abang Noraffian Abang Ibrahim said it has received only one submission so far to its first proposal on the proposed redelineation.
However, he said the submission, received via the EC website, was "incomplete".
He did not say if it supported or objected to the proposed redelineation, which went on a month-long public display from Sept 1.
He added that it was still early days to be receiving submissions.
