andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2011-01-18 12:35 pm
andrewducker) wrote2011-01-18 12:35 pm
Political Question
At the moment the House of Lords are debating the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill.
I've heard numerous claims that this bill is incredibly unfair, and blatant gerrymandering by the Conservative Party.
Looking at the details, I'm feeling baffled. I can see a claim that the exemption for the three Scottish constituencies (Two Liberal Democrat, on Scottish National Party) are biased in their favour. But I can't see how a system whereby people are grouped together in what's going to be a massively arbitrary manner (each area must be within 5% of the national average, and are set up by independent bodies - the Boundary Commissions).
I don't really have a stake in this one - I'd just like someone to explain how this system would give an advantage to any one party. I can see that it could _remove_ advantage from a party if the old system with much less equal constituency sizes gave that party an advantage, but I'm totally failing to see how it's anything like gerrymandering.
Am I missing something obvious?
I've heard numerous claims that this bill is incredibly unfair, and blatant gerrymandering by the Conservative Party.
Looking at the details, I'm feeling baffled. I can see a claim that the exemption for the three Scottish constituencies (Two Liberal Democrat, on Scottish National Party) are biased in their favour. But I can't see how a system whereby people are grouped together in what's going to be a massively arbitrary manner (each area must be within 5% of the national average, and are set up by independent bodies - the Boundary Commissions).
I don't really have a stake in this one - I'd just like someone to explain how this system would give an advantage to any one party. I can see that it could _remove_ advantage from a party if the old system with much less equal constituency sizes gave that party an advantage, but I'm totally failing to see how it's anything like gerrymandering.
Am I missing something obvious?
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Well, let's work on the (I would say pretty reasonable?) premise that the basis of UK politics is that an MP is responsible, first and foremost, to his or her constituency. He or she is there for them, is answerable to them, and is in his or her position to represent their specific needs and requirements in parliament.
The Scottish Highland constituencies have an incredibly low population density by comparison to the rest of the country - no large cities, lots of mountains. As such, they also have specific needs and objectives as constituencies - needs that are quite different from those constituencies that contain large population centres. Rural areas have vastly different priorities from urban areas with regard to funding, education, government subsidies, transport, and the list goes on and on, and those few rural MPs are the only people representing those already very large (in land mass) areas in government.
If you imposed upon those constituencies the population requirements levelled at the rest of the country by these reforms, you basically divide the top of Scotland into a few enormous constituencies - I'm sure someone smarter than me has already worked out how this would likely look but being at work I don't have time to do the Googling on this one.
This creates several issues. Firstly, the MPs for those constituencies already have their work cut out for them getting around the place; this gets worse. On a practical level, it's just hard to get everywhere when it takes hours to drive across your constituency - my MP can walk across his in twenty minutes. Secondly, the constituencies themselves become so diverse in terms of area - urban vs rural, island vs mainland - that their needs and priorities begin to conflict, and the MP is faced with the difficulty of trying to represent a constituency who themselves have very little in the way of a coherent, consistent voice - they all want different things. What would inevitably happen is that the majority would will out, and that would almost certainly mean that urban priorities would be met over rural.
Now, I suppose on a purely Utilitarian level this is absolutely fair - the majority of the population of Scotland is urban, and so they just win and the rural communities lose out because there just aren't enough of them. But the choice has been made to attempt to strike a balance in this and to exempt these rural areas from boundary redistribution both to look after their unique needs as highland and island communities and from a practical point of view in terms of how much land a working MP can really be expected to cover, and I think there's a pretty good argument that, in the interests of a more balanced, reasoned fairness, one that takes into account minority needs and practicalities, exempting those constituencies is the right choice.
So I suppose 'objective' is perhaps not quite the right term, since that might suggest I mean 'without compassion'. I suppose what I mean is that there's an objective argument that the decision is non-partisan.
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The large size of the constituency, and the need to be available to people in it is something I can see needs to be compromised over.
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Doesn't sound very fiddly to me.
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Why not just do what Scotland does and have non-geographic MPs that pick up the bits and pieces in reasonably round numbers?
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Total population?
Adults?
Registered voters?
Actual voters?
What about constituencies with large amounts of EU national who are able to vote in Euro and local elections?
What would you do if the population changed? (Over a ten year period the population of Swindon increased by 10%, or by thousands of voters a year.)
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You'd also need to periodically update your measure. I'm ... not really sure why you listed that as if it'd be a problem.
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I do think there are genuine issues of representation to be discussed when setting the measure. Do MP's work for citizens or tax payers? Are they responsible to voters, registered voters or the wider population.
(Not that these issues don't also affect how you size constituencies but they come out into the open more).
It's not so much the updating of the measure s the timing of the update. Should you change the weighting if a large housing development is built in a constituency or a large factory closes and everyone moves away mid way through a Parliament?
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I think constituencies with roughly equal numbers of people are probably better, and that's still how you'd carve things up, but in some cases you can't easily do that as others have mentioned in the threads here, and in those cases this system resolves those problems.
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A similar refinement would be to weight MP votes in proportion to the size of the their majority.
There are some issues in Scotland with Top-Up MSP's being a different class. They often have safer seats, have less case work but lack moral authority. I think a weighting system in Parliament might lead to some of those issues.
Given some of the practical difficulties I'd rather the time and effort went in to enacting PR.
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Might I be allowed to have a small, very culturally and politically homogenous constituency if I wanted with one, low geared MP or opt for a larger constituency with a more powerful MP?
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Re timing, look up the Australian federal system for triggering re-districting. BTW, they have the advantage of a high degree of compliance to compulsory registration and voting.
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