Belize's 6 districts are politically divided into 31 constituencies. Each constituency sends one representative to Belize's House of Representatives for 5-year terms. This election is known as the General Election. Each person (who is eligible to vote) votes for the candidate they would want to represent their constituency in Central Government.
Each political party nominates a candidate or Standard Bearer for each constituency. The winner becomes the Area Representative of the constituency, while the loser generally remains the Standard Bearer of that constituency for his/her political party.
Constituencies of Belize
Division of constituencies
Belize's constituencies are divided in such a way that their voting population be as equal as possible to each other, ensuring, theoretically, that resources are equally shared among the country's citizens, as required by the Constitution. After the 2003 General Elections, two additional constituencies were created from territory of existing constituencies in order to further ensure the equality of the voting populations among the constituencies.
New constituencies
In Belize's 2003 General Elections, 29 constituencies voted in their Area Representatives for Belize's House of Representatives. Since then it was noted that the difference in voting populations between the most and least populous constituencies was rather large (Cayo South then had 8,000 voters compared to Pickstock's 1000+). In 2004 a Task Force was appointed by the Elections and Boundaries Commission to study the matter. Their Final Report was submitted in October 2004. It is noted that the Elections and Boundaries Department has the right to occasionally reassess constituencies, usually after the latest census or population estimate.
Among several things that their report suggested, the expansion of the Cayo District's number of constituencies to six (from four) had the most impact. Later the following year (2005) the law was passed to create two additional constituencies within the boundaries of Cayo. The newly created constituencies are Belmopan, containing the capital city of that name, and Cayo North East, centered on Spanish Lookout.
These new constituencies held their first-ever election during the General Election in 2008.
List of Belize's constituencies by district
Below are the Districts and their respective constituencies:
Below is a list of the voting population by constituency as of March 2015, sorted out by districts for ease of reference.
Note that these populations are for Belizean citizens who are eligible to vote and does not represent actual population. As of March 2015 the voting population of Belize is estimated at 148,026 while the total population is estimated at 301,300.
The Voter Age Population (VAP), i.e. all persons over the age of eighteen, is 161,677, or 53.66% of the total population. Of these, more than 91 percent are actually registered. Males slightly outnumber females in the population, though the gap is noticeable in the larger urban areas such as Belize City, home to 10 constituencies.
Below is the chronological order for the creation of Belize's current constituencies.
1954
The following were the nine original constituencies created for the British Honduras Legislative Assembly:
Belize District: Belize North, Belize Rural, Belize South, Belize West
Cayo District: Cayo
Corozal District: Corozal
Orange Walk District: Orange Walk
Stann Creek District: Stann Creek
Toledo District: Toledo
1961
In a major nationwide redistricting, all of the previous constituencies were abolished and replaced with the following, doubling the total number of constituencies to 18:
