Do the parties setup districts to give themselves vote advantages in Europe, Australia, Japan, etc? I expect they do but have not heard much about it.
I know most 1st world places have a census like the US does but I don’t know if they use that data to redo the voting districts.
(I know many of those places have a parliamentary system which is not the same as what we have in the US)
In a lot of countries an independent technocratic commission, at arm’s length from the politicians, sometimes chaired by a judge, is appointed to draw up changes to electoral boundaries after each census.
Plus, in countries which have proportional electoral systems rather than the winnner-takes-all system that prevails in the US, there may be less to be gained by gerrymandering. Still something to be gained, but less, so the incentive to do it, when balanced against the odium for doing it, is less.
In Canada, the boundaries at the federal level are drawn by commissions appointed by the federal government, one for each province. The commissions have three members. One member is chosen by the government party and one by the official opposition party. The Commission is chaired by a superior court judge.
They hold public hearings and draw up a draft map, then there’s a period for public comment on the draft, and then they produce a final draft, which can respond to points made at the public comment stage.
That draft goes to Parliament, which either approves or rejects the map as drawn.
Since that system was put in place some decades ago, I believe parliament has generally accepted the maps from the commissions. Since judges in our system are non-partisan, the process is generally seen as fair and neutral.
There’s a similar process for each province, but the details may vary somewhat.
In no case are the boundaries drawn by Parliament or a provincial legislature directly.
It’s not quite the same thing, but Queensland had the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjelkemander.
Looking at the Wiki and it seems Malaysia is the only other country where the practice is so blatant and institutionalized. Just skimmed it though.
Also certainly not quite the same thing, but I just love the link: welcome to part of the Dutch and Belgian border.
It’s pretty blatant in Singapore. Most of the time, when elections roll around (and you live in areas which actually contest elections), you get a chorus of “I’m voting in where?”.
The same thing used to go on in the US too, but the Supreme Court has essentially banned malapportionment, so gerrymandering has to take other forms.
Ah, the good old Treaty of Maastricht (the 1843 one, that is).
Pre 1970’s Northern Ireland was pretty notorious for drawing up electoral boundaries to ensure the Unionist party won the majority of seats. I think the main component of the scam involved business & property owners getting two or more votes (business owners would have been disproportionately Unionist voting). However overwhelmingly Nationalist Derry (where arguably The Troubles began) was noteworthy for concentrating most of it’s Catholic (ie. Nationalist) electorate in one of the three electoral wards, ensuring the numerically small Protestant (read unionist) voters had a 66% majority in the City Council. I imagine this was achieved by having one heavily populated Catholic ward (Derry South) centred on the Bogside district and two sparsely populated (in comparison) Protestant wards when really the Catholic one could have justified being split up into two.
The high population of the Derry South ward was facilitated by restricting housebuilding in other parts of the city and building high rise public housing towers in the Bogside- The Rossville flats. I have heard anecdotal evidence that in post WW2 England various local authorities sited public housing estates in areas where it would either maintain their voting majority or upset the rival party’s. The idea being that most council housing tenants would be of a mind to vote Labour. Given that public housing is so prevalent in Europe (and parts of East Asia too) I would imagine there’s a lot of scope for this type of gerrymandering.
part of the problem in the USA came from the issue that minorities were not able to vote “their” candidate, since they tended to be minorities in all districts. The courts enacting civil rights laws stepped in to ensure the districts were drawn to ensure that some minority groupings in fact were majorities - effectively gerrymandering, but since their heats were pure, obviously not the same as arranging things to vote in a party, right?
You can debate whether creating ghetto (in the original sense of the word) districts serves a good purpose or not, but if it works one way, it apparently works the other…
Discussions about occur every now and then in Germany, but the impact of gerrymandering here is much more limited. This is because the German electoral system is a hybrid of first-past-the-post single member districts and proportional representation on the basis of party lists. The latter determines primarily how many seats a party will, in fact, get in the parliament, so there is not as much to gain from gerrymandering as in countries electing only on the basis of first-past-the-post.
In London, Shirley Porter, one of the local gov leaders, was accused and found guilty of gerrymandering in a big homes for votes scandle. She ended up paying a 12 million pound fine . Shirley Porter - Wikipedia
Here the Electoral Commission reviews the boundaries every ten years or so and makes recommendations for changes. Parliament can only accept or reject the whole thing, not pieces of it. It’s not unknown to vote it down so that the next election will be fought on the old boundaries, but that only delays it.
Yeah, that is an oddity. But it really is just the way an ancient border runs. It has no political influence.
the Netherlands does have a kind of gerrymandering. In every province, there is a watership. Sometimes several waterships. They are an ancient kind of government, with their own elections and their own right to tax inhabitants of their part of the province.
The board of the watership is ruled by several elected parties. Usually there is one "green"party, that wants to make the water more natural, one "cost"party, that just wants to keep the costs and taxes down while doing the minimum to ensure there are no floods. And there is the agricultural party, that wants to make sure water levels are just so to ensure maximum agricultural convenience and profit.
As only 5 % of the populace is still employed in agriculture, the result should be a minimum number of “agro”-board members in the Watership council. But the farmers have found a way to be a majority faction instead. And here’s the gerrymandering way in which they do so.
They’ve split up the province in about 6 parts. Every part has a party enrolled in the Watership elections. Every party is called: "Water interests < regio name>. They make sure that all ( yes, ALL) farmers turn out and vote for the local "water interest- party. Also, al lot of people who have to vote and don’t know what a watership is if it would come up from their sewer in the toilet and and bit them in the ass, vote for those parties because they at least regognize the name of their region.
Spain’s “voting districts” are administrative areas otherwise (townships, provinces or regions). Being able to redefine voting districts would require a fundamental change to our whole legal and administrative system; I think we’ll see the Independent Republic of Cartagena make a comeback before we see that. Doing things such as force small townships to merge into a larger one already meet more resistance than it’s worth, and that carries evident savings.
Beg pardon? Malapportionment is not only allowed in the US, but Constitutionally required, at such a deep level that it can’t even be changed via amendment.
Well, there are different levels of malapportionment. The Senate is constitutionally malapportioned, but the House is well-apportioned within a state and as close to well-apportioned as rounding allows between states.
In Peru, gerrymandering is all but impossible. Electoral districts are the actual political divisions (Region-province-district) and changing borders requires a law.
That seems like a good way to end up with a bunch of rotten boroughs.
