Political Question

[andrewducker]

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?

Comments

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

There's no such thing as "entitled to vote but not registered". If you don't register you're not entitled to vote.
And immigrants - from outside the EU, anyway - aren't allowed to vote in general elections.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Well, there is the position that everyone is entitled to vote as a basic right. But the solution would seem to be more effective voter registration drives than anything to do with electoral boundaries?

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I think both, because it is such a massive problem, and a growing one

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Agreed. And unfortunately there are many people in our society who don't have that basic right, such as my wife. Voting is still a privilege, not a right, in this country.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it should be phrased as "entitled to register, but not registered". Should they be counted?

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I would say not - assuming that we put more effort into electoral registration than we currently do. If we don't count them, then we're counting every actual vote as equal to every other vote. If we *do* count them, then we're weighting votes so that the votes of those who live in areas where more people don't register count more than the votes of those who live in areas where people *do* register.
That would make a kind of sense - *if* we could assume that the people who do register are an accurate representation of those who don't. I think the mere fact of them having registers makes that an inappropriate assumption. For a start, I know some (not many) people who refuse to register to vote because they object to the whole concept of parliamentary democracy. Their refusal is an active political gesture (in their eyes) and they would probably object to 'their vote' being distributed among the other people in their area who don't share their views.

Fundamentally, if your concern is that, for example, teenagers aren't being fairly represented because they don't register to vote, the solution to that *isn't* to count the votes of adults who live in an area with lots of teenagers. If poor people don't register, then counting the votes of rich people who live in poor areas as more important might actually end up further *dis*enfranchising them. And so on.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Actually a whole range of non-citizens who are resident in Britain can vote in local, national and European elections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_foreigners_to_vote#United_Kingdom

The only thing they need to do is to put themselves on the Electoral Register.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Sorry, should have said "from outside the EU and 'qualifying Commonwealth immigrants'". There are so few of the latter that they don't really impact on much.