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

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I'm concerned about the practical workability of a system where MP's votes were weighted rather than simply having roughly equal constituencies.

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?

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I think issues of what do you do when a factory closes or more people move in to an area aren't all that significant. It's not common for a population (that would be represented by an MP) to change by a very significant amount (like 50%) in a short period like 4 years.

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.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

It's not that uncommon that it doesn't need to be considered in the set up and when it happens it immediately creates a case of transparent unfairness.


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.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Would you let people chose the size of their constituency?

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?

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

I agree about these issues being currently present, but less obvious in most countries. Check the number of actual votes required to become a MP in a Maori electorate vs a General one in NZ. Low turnout in the Maori seats is just one contributing factor.

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.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Personally I'm a big fan of compulory voting so long as the ballot included a "none of these" option and something happened if there were a lot of "none of these" votes cast.