Publicité

Electoral boundaries and the constitution: No requirement for equality in the number of voters!

4 octobre 2018, 07:47

Par

Partager cet article

Facebook X WhatsApp

lexpress.mu | Toute l'actualité de l'île Maurice en temps réel.

 

A balanced number of voters among the 20 constituencies of the Island of Mauritius can be claimed to be a requirement for a more equitable representation of the people, and hence upholding the principles of democracy. But a Section of our Constitution seems to indicate that the aim of the delimitation of electoral boundaries is to have, as far as it is reasonably possible, an equal number of inhabitants per constituency. And as not all inhabitants are voters, this may be a source of confusion which eventually a constitutional revision exercise could address.

Registration

For electoral purposes, the constitutional requirement is for registration of electors, the exercise being necessary to know who can vote and who cannot, and in what constituency. But the registration exercise carried out by the Electoral Boundaries Commission will also tell us the number of electors in any particular constituency.

Our Constitution provides for an Electoral Supervisory Commission and an Electoral Commissioner, and at Section 41 (1), the functions of such institutions, as they relate to the number of voters, are stated: “The Electoral Supervisory Commission shall have general responsibility for, and shall supervise, the registration of electors for the election of members of the Assembly … and … shall have such powers and other functions relating to such registration.”

Electoral boundaries

Registration of electors is linked to constituencies’ delimitation. According to the Constitution, the Electoral Boundaries Commission reviews the boundaries of the constituencies and presents a report to the Assembly every 10 years.

The process of delimitation of constituencies allows for alterations to the boundaries for a given reason. This can be gathered from a reading of Section 39 sub Section (3) of the Constitution: “The report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission shall make recommendations for any alterations to the boundaries of the constituencies as appear to the Commission to be required so that the number of inhabitants of each constituency is as nearly equal as is reasonably practicable to the population quota” (the underlining is ours).

This sub-section refers to inhabitants and does not say only those who qualified to vote at an election. The Constitution further gives us many indications of inhabitants who cannot be electors in a particular constituency. Electors therefore form only a subset within the set of inhabitants. Hence, the number of inhabitants is always superior to the number of electors. The extent of the difference between the number of inhabitants and the number of electors may vary from one constituency to another. Now, if we go by the letter of the Constitution, this would mean that the above sub-section is not concerned with the number of registered electors in each constituency: the question of equality in their numbers per se does not arise.

There is a caveat to the effect that the number of inhabitants need not be the same, having regard to certain factors. We may therefore even expect discrepancies in the number of inhabitants in the constituencies. But the main idea conveyed by the sub-section (3) is the equal number of inhabitants in the 20 constituencies of Mauritius. The constitutional requirement as regards the size of constituencies is about the number of inhabitants in each constituency and there is no reference to the number of electors when it comes to reviews of electoral boundaries.

One cannot downplay the difference between inhabitants and electors and suggest that the former could be a proxy for the latter. Further, we do not know what this difference is for the reasons that that electoral boundaries are different from administrative boundaries, and that the mechanism for the registration of electors is different from the exercise to count the number of inhabitants.

All inhabitants are counted every 10 years, with adjustments made on a yearly basis to take into account births deaths and migration. Enumeration areas for the taking of the census are contained in physical boundaries set by Statistics Mauritius for the purpose of conducting the Housing and Population Census. These areas have delimitations which are different from the boundaries of constituencies.

Democratic representation

Viewed from a political angle even though there is a difference between inhabitants and electors, this may not be an issue, constitutionally speaking, as long as between any two constituencies, the disparity is in the number of electors per constituency, and not in the number of inhabitants. This would be in line with a Constitution that defines democracy as government by the people. And inhabitants are people. And when we say people: we do not mean only electors!

For those militating for an effective and equitable democratic representation of the people, the focus could be on equality in the number of inhabitants per constituency, if they want to win on the constitutional front!