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Malaysia’s First-Past-the-Post Electoral System 243

Federation as it can be without causing undue disparity between the population
quota of the state and the population quota of the Federation.
(4) Each state shall be divided into constituencies in such manner that each
constituency contains a number of electors as nearly equal to the electoral
quota of the State as may be after making due allowance for the distribution
of the di erent communities and for di erences in density of population and
the means of communication, but the allowance so made shall not increase or
reduce the number of electors in any constituency to a number di ering from
the electoral quota by more than fteen per cent.
(5) In this Article,
(a) ‘electoral quota’ means the number obtained by dividing the number of
electors in the Federation or a State by the total number of constituencies or, as
the case may be, the number of constituencies in that state;
(b) ‘population quota’ means the number obtained by dividing the population
of the Federation or of a State by the total number of constituencies or, as the
case may be, the number of constituencies in that state.
e 1962 Constitutional Amendment replaced these clauses with Sub-section 2(c) of
the newly-inserted irteenth Schedule:
… the number of electors within each constituency ought to be approximately
equal except that, having regard to the greater di culty of reaching electors in
the country districts and the other disadvantages facing rural constituencies, a
measure of weightage for area ought to be given to such constituencies, to the
extent that in some cases a rural constituency may contain as little as one half of
the electors of any urban constituency.
e last clause implies a ratio of 2 for the electorate sizes of the largest and the smallest
constituencies, which is mathematically equivalent to a maximum deviation of 33.33
per cent from the average.
4 As the IGC Report provided no population or citizenry gures, the 1964 population
gures are used here to estimate inter-regional malapportionment.
5 Claims, however, that Sabah and Sarawak, with one-sixth of the national electorate,
were to inherit veto power after Singapore’s departure in 1965 by their seats’ being
raised from one-quarter to one-third of the total, are unfounded.
6 Before the 2008 election, national news agency Bernama (2008) reported that Perak’s
then-BN chief minister promised to ‘allocate’ a new parliamentary constituency to the
People’s Progressive Party, the coalition’s smallest component party in West Malaysia.
7 e same constitutional amendment gave one federal seat to the newly carved-out
Federal Territory of Putrajaya and ve more to Sabah. e total number of parliamentary
seats rose from 193 to 219.
8 A simple majority of the 222-member parliament requires 112 seats, not just 111.
at overlap causes the sum of smallest and largest to exceed 100 per cent.
9 FPTP allows a party to win a majority of seats despite winning a minority of votes,
an e ect called a ‘manufactured majority’. With equal apportionment, the theoretical
minimum vote share to win a parliamentary majority is just above 25 per cent, or 50

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