In a post-election analysis published Thursday, May 14, 2026, the U.S.-based Carter Center has delivered a mixed assessment of Guyana’s 2025 general and regional elections, praising the process’ far greater transparency than the heavily contested 2020 vote while calling for sweeping reforms to fix outdated electoral boundaries that violate the core democratic principle of equal suffrage.
The September 1, 2025 polls delivered a clear political shift: incumbent President Irfaan Ali’s People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) secured re-election with an expanded parliamentary majority, while the long-dominant opposition bloc A Partnership for National Unity, led by the People’s National Congress Reform, was upset by the newly launched We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party. WIN claimed 16 seats to become the largest opposition faction in the 65-seat National Assembly, with APNU finishing second among opposition groups.
The core recommendation from the Carter Center, which has observed Guyanese elections and supported democratic development in the country since 1992, centers on the urgent need to redraw electoral constituency boundaries that have not been updated in 24 years, since they were set by parliamentary legislation in 2001. New 2022 national population data, released in January 2026, confirms that significant demographic shifts across the country have left the current boundary framework severely misaligned with the principle of one person, one vote.
Under Guyana’s current complex electoral system, 40 parliamentary seats are allocated through a single national constituency, while the remaining 25 seats are distributed across the country’s 10 regions as a geographic component. The framework assumes equal population distribution across the 25 geographic seats, but two national censuses conducted in 2012 and 2022 have recorded substantial population changes that the system has never adjusted to.
The Carter Center’s report notes that Guyana’s existing Representation of the People Act already grants the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) legal authority to divide the country into polling districts and sub-districts, with the only restriction that districts cannot cross regional boundaries. To bring the country in line with global democratic standards, the organization proposes that a ongoing national constitutional review process evaluate Guyana’s entire electoral system and boundary delimitation methodologies to guarantee equal suffrage.
International best practices mandate regular boundary reviews to prevent unequal voting power, and the Carter Center is calling on Guyanese authorities to codify mandatory periodic reviews into national law. The reforms would adjust boundaries to reflect current population counts and cap the allowed population deviation between constituencies at less than 10 percent, down from the large deviation that currently exists. The organization also recommends that all apportionment criteria, including whether boundaries are drawn based on total residents, registered voters, actual voter turnout or a combination of metrics, be made fully public to increase accountability.
“Reforming laws related to boundary delimitation and addressing the large gap between electoral quotients for obtaining seats in small and large electoral constituencies will allow Guyana to more fully respect the principle of equal suffrage,” the report states.
Beyond boundary reform, the Carter Center joined other regional and international observer missions in highlighting persistent flaws in Guyana’s electoral ecosystem. Key concerns cited include lax campaign finance regulations that allow unregulated spending, the misuse of state resources that disproportionately benefits incumbent political parties, unequal access to media coverage for opposition groups, limited participation from civil society organizations, and structural barriers that prevent marginalized communities from fully engaging in the political process.
Even as it called for further reform, the Carter Center offered significant praise for improvements made after the deeply flawed 2020 election, which was marred by widespread attempts to rig the vote count. Post-2020 legislative overhauls to the tabulation process delivered tangible progress, the organization confirmed.
“Overall, the post-2020 reforms were positive, contributing to a more efficient and transparent tabulation process that better ensured results reflected the will of the electorate,” the report read. Carter Center observer teams assessed tabulation procedures across all 17 national tabulation centers, finding the process was conducted reasonably or very well in every location. Transparency was greatly improved through the public posting of official Statements of Poll and the timely upload of all results to GECOM’s official website, the organization added.