As only five months remain for the general elections, voter education on the new voting system is expected to start soon.
The new voting system for Fiji has been confirmed in the Electoral Decree which came into effect late last month.
Under the system, the ballot paper will have a list of candidate numbers.
There will be no party symbols or candidate’s names on the ballot paper.
This system also has only one constituency and that is Fiji.
People can vote for any person who is an official candidate.
As already highlighted, it is not race based and does not restrict people from voting only for candidates in certain areas.
Attorney General and Minister for Elections, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said the candidate names and numbers will be drawn by the Elections Office.
“Under the decree, it said that the numbering must start from 135 and you may say why 135. Because it is a number that you will not remember. If you start candidate numbers from one it is very easy to remember. What will happen. If you have five political parties and all five of them field 50 candidates. So you have 250 candidates. How do they get the number. The decree says that all the numbers will be put in a barrel and then you draw the name. So whoever is the first name will be 135, then it goes down sequentially. It can be from any political party, can be an independent person. The reason why we have not given 99. It is easy to remember just like 100, 1, 2, 3. These are easy to remember so it starts from 135.”
Sayed-Khaiyum said the candidate’s names, their photos and numbers will be displayed at all polling stations when they go to cast their votes.
It has been confirmed in the Electoral Decree that people can either tick, cross or circle only one candidate's number on the ballot paper.
Counting of votes will be done at each polling station however the process for tabulation of results received from each station must be conducted by the Supervisor of Elections in Suva or such other publicly accessible place designated by the Supervisor.
The Supervisor will then ensure that the party list of all the political parties in the Final National Results Tally is re-arranged in the descending order with the party candidate who received the most votes listed at the top of the party list.
Immediately after preparing the Final National Results Tally, the Supervisor will publicly announce the results as contained in the tally and the announcement must include the number of votes received by each candidate, and the total number of votes received by each political party.
The Electoral Commission will then immediately proceed to determine the names of the candidates who have been elected as members of parliament.
The commission will disregard any total number of votes received under the name of any political party or any independent candidate that has not received a total that is at least five percent of the total number of votes received by all political parties and independent candidates.
Under the constitution, a political party or independent candidate shall not qualify for any seat in parliament unless they receive at least five percent of the total number of votes cast.
The Electoral Commission must then divide the remaining total number of votes of each party or any independent candidate by one.
The result from the division calculation must be recorded on the Candidate Allocation Form in the first row under the names of each remaining party and independent candidate.
The division calculation of the same remaining total of votes cast for each party should then continue until the number 50 as there are 50 seats.
Each result from the calculation should be rounded off to the nearest whole number.
The seats will then be allocated based on the proportional representation system.
According to the constitution, the seats in parliament must be awarded to candidates in proportion to the total number of votes cast for each political party contesting the election which shall be determined by totaling the number of votes cast for each candidate of that political party.
Story by: Vijay Narayan
