Timothy D. Sisk (2017) attempted to define the electoral system as the rules in constitutions or laws that describe how votes are translated into seats, such as a typical single presidential ‘seat’, a member of parliament’s seat or a mayor or local councilor’s seat . There are a few types of The Electoral System Families according to Reynolds (2005) which are “Plurality/Majority”, “Proportional Representation (PR)”, “Mixed” and “Others”. Malaysia is a democratic country that elects the government through “First past the post (FPTP)” which is one of sub in ‘Plurality/Majority’. However, there is a cry for a change of Malaysia’s current electoral system to ‘Proportional Representation’. This article discusses the simple majority and proportional representation systems and the view of experts in the field of politics, law, and management of Malaysia’s elections.
Malaysia currently adopts the FPTP system. Based on the respondent’s opinion on this article, there are several reasons why Malaysia adopts the FPTP system. It’s because of background, history, social-demography and cross-cultural, religion and ethnic that Malaysia has. Schwartz (2002) explains that in FPTP or simple majority system, the voter selects a candidate from a ballot paper and the candidate who garnered the majority votes or the highest number of votes will be the winner. While Proportional Representation can define as every party choose the representatives based on the percentage of votes secured from the voters. For illustration, if Party A receives XV% of votes,
Party A will have XV% of the total seats. In other words, FPTP can describe as a winner take all and PR is balance the representative in the legislative, representation is the actual votes received by each party. However, everything must have good and vice versa. According to the article, there are a few goods of FPTP which are close MP-constituency relationship, the stability of the country, the minority will also be represented in the legislative, development of constituent and simplicity of this system. The advantage of FPTP is, the representative of the member in the legislative body does not truly represent the choice of the voters. Also, UK Engage (2013) states the disadvantages of FPTP which encourage tactical voting and representatives can get elected with small amounts of public support, as the size of the winning margin is irrelevant.
On the contrary, the PR system produces a fairer result, reducing the disparity of seats between parties, encourage voters to turn out because every vote is matters. However, PR systems could give rise to coalition commission governments and gives difficulties to voters and the electoral commission to understand and manage. Most of the respondents agree if Malaysia adopts a PR system instead of the FPTP system. This is due to overcome the weakness of the FPTP system and one of the alternatives to doing away with gerrymandering in the electoral system. However, they also highlighted the vice versa of the PR system which is, the special privileges of the Malay will diminish and the election is racist and the parties are ethnically centered.
I would like to critics a view from the respondent. On “Should Malaysia adopt PR system?” in paragraph 6 line 2, the respondent said that the PR system will diminish the special privileges of the Malays. According to, Prof Madya Dr Nazri Muslim (2018), Federal Constitution, Article 159 (5) clarifies that the amendment to the constitution requires the support of 2/3 of all councils and the consent of the Council of Rulers (MRR), involving matters such as royal sovereignty, special status of Malay, Bumiputeras of Sabah and Sarawak, national languages and religion federation. Thus, it is clear that the constitutional amendments regarding this matter need approval from MRR and it is difficult to amend the above constitution as long as the MRR does not approve it. Besides, I believe that, if the privileged position of the Bumiputera is compromised, it will surely be upheld by the people of this country. In my humble opinion, defending the constitution is not a racist thing. Next, I would like to against the writer’s opinion that FPTP is not explicitly mentioned as the electoral system in Malaysia, while Timothy D. Sisk clearly said that Malaysia is using the FPTP system in electoral system (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2017, p.07).
I would like to suggest an idea, to make a reader easier to read this article. Instead of explaining it in a long sentence, the writer can explain their idea through mind maps or tables. For example, the arguments on the types of subsystems in PR and the respondents’ views on electoral systems in Malaysia are easier to understand if the writer does it in mind map or table. Also, the author should take respondents from all walks of life because there are some facts and views of the respondent that the PR system needs further understanding especially in those who live in a rural area. So the statistical method can make a reader more confident with the research.
