Sunday Times 2
Online tool allows citizens’ participation in electoral demarcation process
View(s):LIRNEasia has designed a new online tool that allows citizens to participate knowledgeably in the re-demarcation process by developing their own demarcation scenarios and submitting them to the Delimitation Commission for consideration.
Dr. Sujatha Gamage
The move comes as the Delimitation Commission gets ready to demarcate wards ahead of the Provincial Councils elections next year.
The demarcations tool is the brainchild of LIRNEasia lead researcher Dr. Sujata Gamage, PhD MPA, who specialises in data analytics for public policy. Dr. Gamage has served as the administrator for research programmes at Ohio Board of Regents, USA, as consultant to the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka, and as the Director General of the Tertiary and Vocational Commission of Sri Lanka.
Since July 2016, Dr. Gamage has worked with the Forum of Minor Parties in Parliament to make informed interventions regarding proposed electoral reforms. Dr. Gamage’s work focused on ‘what-if’ simulations of reforms, based on data from past elections. Subsequently, Dr. Gamage was appointed as an advisor on electoral reform to the Constitutional Assembly.
LIRNEasia secured the detailed census data through the good office of the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly and developed the tool with a team of GIS experts. With this tool, users can add or delete Grama Niladhari Divisions to or from proposed electorates. This creates a new distribution of electorates in the given district along with indicators of the resulting new population size and ethnic distribution in each new electorate.
The project was funded by the International Development Research Centre of Canada. The public can access it at www.opendemarcations.lk.