Not really. Presumably the actual political divisions have a significance and function that goes beyond simply serving electoral districts. If a district becomes depopulated to a point where its tax base is eroded, therefore, there’ll be pressure that has nothing to do with electoral representation to alter its boundaries, merge it with another district or otherwise make some change that reflects reality.
I was talking about within the states. Before the cases in the 60s, there were states that would do things like apportion districts using whole counties only, so an urban county could only get a single district even if it should have had two or more.
The present UK Government has passed an Act through Parliament to reduce the number of MPs in the House of Commons from 650 to 600. The Opposition bitterly opposed this. The Conservatives claimed it was on the grounds of cost saving, but the actual money saved is utterly miniscule.
Our constituency boundaries in the UK are drawn up by independent Boundary Commissions for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, all chaired by the impartial Speaker of the Commons, and the redrawn boundaries for the 600-Commons are being considered by Parliament right now.
More seriously, the Government is reducing the size of the House without any corresponding reduction in what’s called the ‘payroll vote’ - those MPs on the Government side undertaking some form of function for the Crown, ranging from full-blown ministers down to Parliamentary Private Secretaries, which are pretty junior. It used to be that only Ministers were bound to support the Government’s collective decision and junior officials were free to rebel, but over the decades the discipline has ramped up.
So while there’s no direct gerrymandering, there’s a real danger that with a reduced Commons, the Government’s presence in the House is proportionately strengthened, undermining the independence of the House from the Executive.
At the same time, while i am a supporter of an appointed, non-elected House of Lords, Cameron in particular was notorious for flooding the other place with new members in an effort to shore up the Government’s presence there. Mercifully, the House seems fully independent and full of fight despite the Government’s activities, but it harms the reputation of the House to be so large and vulnerable to accusations of having undeserving people in its midst.
Whenever the Electoral Commission comes up with a boundary change, the party that sees itself losing votes howls “Gerrymander”. In these days, when we can email, tweet or write to an MP, we really don’t need so many of them. I agree that the proposal has not gone far enough and I think 400 would be more than enough.
At least we can abandon the MEP boundaries now - hardly anyone knows where they are or who their MEP is.
I disagree. I don’t seem to remember much screaming of gerrymandering the last time the revisions took place, at least nothing beyond low-level grumbles (and parties have the right to object and point out revisions, which do take place)
Without a federal structure in this country fewer MPs make politicians more remote as they represent more people. 400-odd may be fine for the US with its federal system allowing more local issues to be handled by State reps (although I disagree and think the US Congress could do with expansion, actually), but it’s not ideal for here IMO.
Venezuela gerrymandered their parliamentary districts in the 2000s to favour rural areas. Rural areas in Venezuela (and much of Latin America in general) lean left, so this favoured the incumbent Chavez government.
That assumes that the government will value local government efficiencies more highly than electoral support from that district. If a district is under-populated but votes for the party in power, why would the party in power want to reduce the size of the district and its own electoral support? And if the district is over-populated and votes for the opposition, why would the party in power want to split it into more districts and give it more votes?
They are primarily administrative and only secondarily electoral. Some districts have fewer than 1000 people and the largest one has 1 000 000.
Also, all cities, towns, and villages inside a district. There is no concept of “unincorporated” or things like that.
A district would literally have to be 10 people to even think of merging it.
In Peru, the presidential elections are decided by popular vote so, the number of districts is irrelevant. Congress elections are on the Region level, multinominal, based on population.