Delimitation Equity Project Resource Guide - IFES

Delimitation Equity Project
Botswana: Composition of the Boundary Commission must be Non-Partisan
4. No person shall be qualified to be appointed as Chairman or member of a Delimitation
Commission who –
(a) is a Member of the National Assembly;
(b) is or has been within the preceding five years actively engaged in politics; or
(c) is a public officer.
5. A person shall be deemed to be actively engaged in politics or to have been so engaged during
the relevant time period if –
(a) he is, or was at any time during that period, a Member of the National Assembly;
(b) he is, or was at any time during that period, nominated as a candidate for election to the
National Assembly; or
(c) he is, or was at any time during that period, the holder of an office in any political organization
that sponsors or supports, or has at any time sponsored or supported, a candidate for election as
a Member of the National Assembly.
Constitution of Botswana, 1997, Article 64, Sections 4 and 5
Election Management Bodies
Another, equally common, approach to delimiting constituencies is the use of the
election commission. Delimitation is the responsibility of the election commission in 21
of the 60 countries (35 percent) in our survey which delimit electoral districts. In some of
these countries, the election commission is quite independent of the executive and the
legislature (Lithuania, Mexico, and Poland, for example), but in other countries this is
less true (e.g., Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania).
Legislature
Although many countries have delegated the task of delimitation to an authority other
than the obviously self-interested legislature, in some countries the legislature has
retained this responsibility. In our survey, 14 of the 60 (23 percent) countries indicated
that the legislature delimits electoral constituencies.
However, six of the countries in which the legislature is responsible for delimitation are
countries with List Proportional Representation (List PR) electoral systems. The
legislatures in these countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden)
originally defined a set of electoral district boundaries (often multimember districts) in the
constitution or electoral law, and these constituencies have remained in place for
subsequent elections – although the number of seats assigned to the multimember
constituencies vary over time depending on the population size.
A second set of countries in which the legislature plays a role in the delimitation process
are countries with mixed electoral systems like Italy, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, and Panama.
The boundaries of the constituencies in these countries are of less political consequence
than in those with a First Past the Post electoral system because a separate set of
legislative seats are filled via proportional representation. Elections in mixed systems
usually produce outcomes that are far more proportional than FPTP systems.
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