The Electoral Commission has set a firm cap of 650 voters for each polling station at the upcoming general election, the commission confirmed on April 20. Chairperson Justice Usaia Ratuvili said the decision followed detailed technical advice from the Fijian Elections Office (FEO) and a practical reassessment of voting operations and past turnout patterns.
Justice Ratuvili outlined the commission’s calculations in explaining the move. Polling will open at 7.30am and close at 6pm, giving roughly 10.5 hours or about 630 minutes of voting time. “The minimum time taken for each voter of average literacy to vote is two minutes,” he said, noting that with four voting screens inside a polling station the theoretical capacity would be (630/2) multiplied by four screens — equating to 1,260 voters. Despite that theoretical number, the commission opted for the more conservative 650-voter limit after accounting for real-world voting behaviour and logistical constraints.
The commission’s decision was also informed by turnout and throughput data from recent elections. Justice Ratuvili pointed to historical voter turnouts of 72.8 percent in the 2018 general election and 68.3 percent in 2022, and said most polling-station counts in those contests were completed within four hours. He added that roughly 80 percent of voters in the last three general elections tended to cast ballots during peak periods — either early in the morning when polling opens or in the late afternoon just before closing — but that polling officials generally managed these surges without major crowd-control problems.
Beyond capacity planning, the commission emphasised measures to preserve the integrity and auditability of results. Justice Ratuvili said the FEO has implemented a rigorous counting process to ensure results certified at the polling-station level withstand scrutiny once the presiding officer signs off on the Protocol of Results. He framed the cap as balancing the need for efficient voter throughput with the practicalities of managing queues, staffing, and secure counting at each site.
The cap is authorised under Section 39(2) of the Electoral Act 2014, Justice Ratuvili said, and will guide how electoral rolls are allocated to individual polling stations as preparations continue. The commission has not published a full list of how many polling stations will be opened or how boundaries will be adjusted under the new cap; those operational decisions will be informed by the voter registration roll and logistics planning carried out by the FEO.
Election planners and political stakeholders will now be watching how the cap affects polling-station siting, staffing requirements and voter communications in the weeks ahead. By setting a conservative per-station limit, the commission seeks to minimise overcrowding at peak times while maintaining transparent counting procedures at each location.