If Seats Allocation per Electoral Area Is Changed, Electoral Areas in Indonesia Must be Rearranged

A new discussion arises regarding the Bill for the new Elections Law. Many election experts and activists discuss the possibility of changing the seats allocation per electoral area from 3 to 10 seats per electoral area to only 3 to 8 seats. If this idea is accepted by the Parliament, then the government need to immediately rearrange the delimitation of electoral areas in Indonesia.

Currently, with seats allocation range between 3 to 10 seats per electoral areas, there are 77 electoral areas in Indonesia. A researcher from the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), Heroik Pratama, has conducted a simulation which shows that the government need to rearrange the delimitation of electoral areas if they use 3 to 6 or 3 to 8 seats allocation per electoral area.

According to Heroik’s simulation, with seats allocation range between 3 to 8 seats per electoral area, the number of electoral area will increase to 98 areas. Meanwhile, with seats allocation range between 3 to 6 seats per electoral area, the number of electoral area will increase to 121 areas. For example, the Province of West Java with 11 electoral areas, if the government allocate 3 to 8 seats per electoral area, the number of electoral area will increase to 16, and if the government allocate 3 to 6 seats, the number of electoral areas will be 20.

“By reducing the seats allocation, personal vote will increase and political parties will only be focusing themselves on fewer areas. We do not have to be worry that the reduce of seats allocation will make the election result become more disproportional, because we can engineer the proportionality of an election by using a certain seats and votes counting method,” says Heroik (04/10).

Perludem recommends the government to allocate 3 to 6 seats per electoral area and use Hare Quota counting method. According to Heroik, the Hare Quota method will not alter the proportionality of an election result.