How Voting Power of Sabah Robbed by Malaya

 1963-1964: voter's/MP

Trengganu 25,000

Sabah 9375

Selangor 32,000

2025

Trengganu 115,000

Sabah 68,000

Selangor 168,000

Period State Total Parliamentary Seats Total Registered Voters Avg. Voters Per Seat

1963/64 Selangor 14 ~450,000 ~32,000

  Sabah 16 ~150,000* ~9,375

Present (2024) Selangor 22 ~3,700,000 ~168,000

  Sabah 25

Voting power of Sabah Vs Selangor reduced from 3.4 to 2.5.

​2. The "Weight" of a Vote

​The "value" of a vote is often measured by how many voters it takes to elect one Member of Parliament (MP).

​1963: A voter in Sabah had roughly 3.4 times the "voting power" of a voter in Selangor. This was a deliberate constitutional design to protect the interests of the less populous Borneo states.

​Present: Today, a voter in Sabah has roughly 2.5 times the voting power of a voter in Selangor.

Dari Gemini:

Number of parliamentary seats per voter in Trengganu Vs Sabah in 1963 Vs the .present

​Note on 1963 Data: In 1963, Sabah's first representatives were indirectly elected by the State Legislative Assembly rather than through a direct popular vote. The first direct parliamentary elections for Sabah occurred in 1969/1970. The 1964 data for Terengganu is used as it was the first general election after the formation of Malaysia.

​Key Historical & Modern Differences

​1. The "Borneo Weightage" (1963)

​When Malaysia was formed, Sabah (16 seats) and Sarawak (24 seats) were given a high seat-to-voter ratio. This was a constitutional safeguard to prevent the Peninsular states from having a "two-thirds majority" that could unilaterally amend the Constitution. At the time, a voter in Sabah had nearly 3 times the representative power of a voter in Terengganu.  

​2. The Impact of "Undi18" and Automatic Registration

​The jump in voter numbers in the "Present" column is largely due to the 2021 implementation of Undi18 (lowering the voting age) and Automatic Voter Registration (AVR).

​Terengganu: Now has a very high concentration of voters per seat (115,000+), meaning its seats are among the most "heavily loaded" in the country.

​Sabah: While its voter base has exploded, its 25 seats still result in a much lower average (67,000) compared to Terengganu. This is partly due to its vast geography and the continued application of "rural weightage."

​3. Constituency Maldistribution

​The present-day figures highlight a common critique of the Malaysian electoral system: malapportionment.

​In Terengganu, seats like Kemaman have over 139,000 voters.

​In Sabah, while some seats are large, others like Igan (in neighboring Sarawak, but following a similar Borneo trend) or smaller Sabah rural seats have significantly fewer voters, maintaining the "Borneo advantage" originally intended in the 1963 Malaysia Agreement (MA63).

​Would you like me to look up the specific voter counts for the largest and smallest individual seats within Terengganu and Sabah to see the internal disparity?