News
Overhang issues and selection of women members delay council lists: EC chairman
View(s):By Ishu Bandara
The ‘overhang issue’ and the selection of women to local councils are causing delays in finalising the lists of elected members, Election Commission Chairman R.M.A.L. Rathnayake told the Sunday Times.
As a result, most councils failed to submit their member lists by the May 30 deadline set by the EC for the purpose of issuing the gazette notification.
The EC chief said the commission would, however, proceed with gazetting the lists it had received as of yesterday. Also gazetted will be the names of mayors and chairpersons of 161 councils where a single party has obtained more than 50 per cent of the vote at the May 6 local council elections, the EC chairman said.
According to the EC, under the Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMPR) system, 8,287 members were elected to the 339 local councils across the island. In addition, 516 members were elected under the overhang provision, bringing the total number of members to 8,803.
Mr Rathnayake said the EC would propose suitable amendments by appointing a committee to review the overhang issues and women’s participation, as it has complicated the process and placed some political parties at a disadvantage.
He said that under the current overhang system, it is not possible to determine the exact number of members elected to each local council until all overhang calculations are completed. “This creates significant difficulties,” he noted, “and we need a more efficient system to avoid these overhang-related complications.”
Explaining the seat allocation method, Mr Rathnayake said, “Under the MMPR system, the total number of valid votes received by all political parties and independent groups is divided by the total number of seats to be filled. This result is known as the qualifying number. Each party’s total vote count is then divided by the qualifying number to determine how many seats they are entitled to overall.
“From this entitlement, the number of seats already won through the ward-based system is deducted to calculate how many additional seats a party should receive from the proportional list. However, when a party wins more ward seats than its MMPR entitlement, it results in an ‘overhang.” Mr Rathnayake explained.
Taking a practical example, he added, “If Party X is entitled to 12 seats under the MMPR system but wins 13 through the ward system, it results in one overhang seat.”
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