Election Resources: Part 1
Electoral Boundaries Edition
There’s a common belief that Singaporeans are apolitical and apathetic, that people don’t bother getting involved because they don’t think they have a say either way. I wonder if that perspective stems from a misunderstanding of what counts as political action. We’re not all going to be protestors or run for office. I really like this post from Jolovan Wham and Kirsten Han about Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan. It talks about how everyone plays different and necessary roles in the quest for social change.
The elections are especially important because they are a rare opportunity for Singaporeans to have a direct say in what happens here. Mynah isn’t a Political Publication but we think it’s important to be engaged. In 2020, Karen volunteered as a Polling Agent, Sab covered the elections on television, and I (Ruby) gave Karen snacks while we watched Sab report the results that night. We all play different roles. :)
We’re rounding up some useful resources in the lead up to GE2025.
What’s Up With the Electoral Boundaries?
The 2025 Report of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee is out and wow, everybody’s so creative! Two members of the Mynah team have felt the earth move under their feet. I have been shunted to the new Pasir Ris-Changi GRC and Karen’s now in the fairly cicak-shaped Marine Parade-Braddell Heights.
CAPE’s Electoral Boundaries Explainer
Community for Advocacy and Political Education (CAPE) is an independent and non-partisan group that produces fantastic resources on Singapore’s political system. They just put out an explainer on the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC), the group that recommends the number and boundaries of divisions every election. In it, they go over the history of our electoral system, how it compares to countries with similar historical roots, and some of the public discussions about gerrymandering and the independence of the EBRC.
You can follow CAPE on Instagram for updates. They will be putting more research online as we get closer to the elections. I recommend heading to the website over reading their Instagram posts, though. CAPE links to all their references on the website and it’s very handy for further reading.
This Mathematician’s TikTok Page
Joleen Teo is a graduate student in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics who has made a fantastic series of videos interpreting the EBRC’s report.
In one video, she explains how the EBRC’s figure for the average ratio of electors to elected MPs (28,384 electors per MP) isn’t the whole story. That figure actually ranges from 22,223 voters/MP in Kebun Baru to 33,566 voters/MP in Bukit Panjang.
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She’s also calculated wards’ Polsby-Popper scores, a mathematical formula used to measure the compactness of electoral districts, and run a few other analyses.
Kevin Y.L. Tan’s Webinar for Academia SG
Constitutional law professor Kevin Tan gave a webinar titled Fair or Foul? Electoral Democracy and Boundaries in Singapore on Friday evening. The full recording is available on YouTube and very much worth the watch.
I did not know anything about the history of MacPherson! According to Tan, it became a Single Member Constituency (SMC) because opposition politician Chee Soon Juan and PAP MP Matthias Yao had beef and decided to go outside (the GRC) settle.
The Straits Times’ Constituency Reports
This is probably the most I’ve ever read The Straits Times. Apart from breaking news, Singapore’s paper of record is creating in-depth reports on the different constituencies and will be launching what they call constituency hub pages closer to the campaign period.
As we all know by now, electoral constituencies don’t necessarily describe how residents view their neighbourhoods nor resemble other ways we make sense of our urban space. ST’s profiles of each constituency’s demographics are therefore really useful for understanding the unique qualities, if any, of each ward.
ST explains how they used publicly available data to construct the profiles here. So far, they’ve put out reports on Marine Parade-Braddell Heights and Punggol. I hope they don’t pull a Sufjan and get to all the wards in time for the election!!
data.gov.sg’s Interactive Map
The Elections Department and data.gov.sg, the government’s open data portal, have created an interactive map that displays information like the number of seats per ward, the number of electors per MP, and ward boundary changes over the years.
It tracks changes from 2006 onwards, so you can see how your constituency has changed over the last 20 years. In theory! It is useful because it consolidates information on election results and boundary changes in one resource. But its use is limited for new constituencies because they just didn’t exist before.
It would be more useful to get precinct-level information (the political parties who have contested each ward receive this) because precincts don’t change like the containers in which they’re placed. When wards are effectively the Ship of Theseus paradox in real life, data tagged to the name of the ward is not the most illuminating.
During his webinar, Tan brought up a very important point: we don’t have the right to information through our constitution despite it being enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Data, even on topics that don’t seem “sensitive” at all, is hard to come by in Singapore. The state, and by extension the ruling party, has access to data that opposition parties, civil society, and ordinary citizens do not. This makes it more difficult for people outside the government to check facts, conduct analysis, and generally stay informed. We don’t have a Freedom of Information Act and must rely on data released by government agencies, either publicly or upon request, and statistics revealed during Parliament sittings.
Against this backdrop, we can’t take for granted all the work done to collate and interpret data relevant to the election for the general public. We’ll do another round-up of resources closer to polling day!
