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

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Imagine a county with a large rural hinterland - naturally conservative - and an industrial city - naturally leftwing. You can divide the county up by splitting it north and south, with the city votes split. Or you can divide it rural/urban. One way will produce two conservative MPs, one will produce a conservative and a Labour MP.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

.. and neither is objectively right or wrong.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

because right and wrong are not objective issues, this is the argument I am making. People are not being objective, they are arguing from a social position.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure this is generalisable.

Say your country has 10 million people in the hinterland and 10 million in the city, that hinterland voters always vote for party A and city voters always vote for party B, and that population density in the hinterland is basically consistent everywhere, but much lower than in the city. In that case, a north/south split will get you just over half the hinterland people returning a member of party A, and just under half the hinterland people plus all the city people returning a member of party B. So the north/south split and the rural/urban split return the same results.

With a sufficiently large hinterland population you can get the result you describe. But I'm not sure that giving the minority population 50% of the political representation is the ideal solution...

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Where there are multiple communities in an area you can create boundaries to represent communities (and I include conservative communities) or not. That is a perennial issue with boundary setting, which constantly balances representation against counting. To argue that head-counting is value-neutral, is false. It's an arguable position, but it's not a no-brainer.