1986 Electoral Commission’s constraints

Lou Bondì (The Sunday Times, January 23) wrote: “It was not thanks to the Electoral Commission that democratic justice was finally done in 1987, but thanks to the new clause (in the Constitution) which dictated that the party that won 50 per cent plus one of the votes was the winner.”

This view is unfair on the members of the 1986 Electoral Commission who would, like me, have declined to serve but for the indicated probability of a constitutional change to rectify the inevitability of a degree of gerrymandering either way.

Perhaps it is not amiss to reproduce what I wrote on April 12, 2009, when this issue was raised just before George Abela’s inauguration as President, namely:

“George, three others and myself were the Labour government’s nominees on the 1986 Electoral Commission. There was no ‘seniority’ between us: we all pledged absolute impartiality and correctness. So, incidentally, did the other commissioners chosen by the Nationalist opposition.

“All of us honoured our commitment and co-operated fully in the workings of the Commission, except unfortunately on the delicate issue of the electoral boundaries.

“Not unexpectedly, this proved an impossible task, but not before several attempts had been made for an acceptable compromise which itself would not even guarantee harmony between votes and parliamentary seats.

“The Commission’s chairman and the whole department initiated most of the proposals that could possibly eliminate the widely-perceived ‘gerrymandering’ factor.

“Each time the electoral laws themselves would stand in the way of an agreed compromise among the commissioners, e.g. total contiguity inside each of the 13 districts, not more than a five per cent divergence between their 13 quotas, and other constraints.

“Whichever way we turned within the parameters the perception of gerrymandering remained in favour of one party or the other. This ‘bias’ is in-built into the very restrictions imposed by the electoral legislation itself: this phenomenon was eventually proven by the results of the 1998 general election, but in a direction opposite to that of 1987.

“When all seemed ‘lost’, with unanimity on the boundaries impossible, the constitutional amendment was enacted and we all breathed a sigh of relief. There remained hardly any point in pursuing the disagreement on the boundaries since every possible alternative appeared to harbour a bias for either party.

“To facilitate the administrative work and cause least disruption in the individual candidates’ established ‘territories’, we felt it was just as well to cause minimum changes in the existing boundaries in an effort to meet the constraints.

“Sadly this was not acceptable to the ‘minority’ commissioners whose proposal contained no less a bias than the majority’s, but, of course, in the opposite direction. Hence the dissenting report.”