Where will you be voting in the next General Election? For many registered voters that is set to change due to a redistricting exercise which will remap many of Belize's constituencies, while also creating new constituencies. The idea behind the exercise is to make Belize's electoral divisions more proportional as required by the constitution. As it currently stands, the smaller constituencies have 2600 voters while the largest have close to ten thousand.

And, with the government under the compulsion of a court order prompted by the Belize Peace Movement to present its proposal for redistricting on July 16th, a ReDistricting Task Force, Chaired By Chief Elections Officer Josephine Tamai has presented its report with the proposals for how the Belize electoral map should be redrawn.

It was presented to the Elections and Boundaries commission yesterday - and tonight 7News has obtained a leak of some of the key pages. Jules Vasquez takes a very cursory look at the overall recommendations - and we stress - these are only at the proposal stage:

The Report of the Re-division Task Force was submitted to the Elections and Boundaries Department yesterday.

It proposes new divisions in Orange Walk, which would be Orange Walk South Central. Stann Creek West, which would be Stann Creek North and South and Cayo which would see a new division in Cayo Northwest. And in Belmopan - where that seat would now become Belmopan East and West.

In the Belize district, it proposes that two divisions be eliminated and many others be realigned. Proposed for elimination in the blue are Queen Square and Port Loyola. It also proposes to re-cast Belize Rural South as Ambergris Caye and then send Caye Caulker and St. George's Caye into the Fort George constituency, which will also shave off portion of the Albert constituency, going across the Caribbean Sea and the Belize river to go from 2600 voters to 4600 voters.

But that would still leave the new Ambergris Caye constituency with 8021 voters - more than 1.5 times larger than the smallest proposed constituency, Pickstock with 4,614.

We asked Orange Walk South's Jose Mai about the proposal:

Abelardo Mai, Minister Of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise
"That matter is still yet, I think too preliminary to be discussing with the media because there is still a lot of discussion going on at the Commission level, the elections commission, they are a lot of speculation that we will split one and split, two or maybe others. I still believe that this matter will end up in the courts because somebody will take it to the courts. If it is deemed necessary to be constitutionally right that Orange Walk South need to be divided then so be it. I mean whatever they give me I shall take, and whatever I take I will do my best to be re-elected again"

As Mai stressed, and we repeat these are only the proposals - but they are also the considered position of the technical team of experts after months of study and analysis. In sum, they propose eliminating two divisions from the Belize District and adding a total of four between the Cayo, Orange Walk and Stann Creek districts - that would leave the new map with a total of 33 divisions.

Presently the report is being reviewed by the members of the Elections and Boundaries but it has also reached politicians of both parties.

Next, the Elections and Boundaries commission will study the report and send in their final proposals to the National Assembly in July. There will be a flurry of politicking before this is sent in, and, likely a flurry of lawsuits after it is sent in. We will be watching closely.