petro[SMTP:petro@bounty.org] wrote: Mr. May:

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At 10:20 AM +0000 11/14/00, Ken Brown wrote:

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But maybe to redraw the boundaries. That's a common problem in Britain. Every now and again some government (almost always Conservative, for reasons to do with gerrymandering I suspect) gets it into its head that it would be a Good Thing if counties were more or less the same size so tried to amalgamate smaller ones and split larger ones and "rationalize" boundaries.

You _do_ know, I assume, that the very term "gerrymandering" came from experiences in the U.S.?

(Not to be confused with "jerrymathersing," which refers to the false claim that a person died in a war.)

The impression that I get is that in Merry Old England, voting is done by county, whereas in this country voting is done by district.

For the benefit of those not familiar with the American system:

States (obviously) and counties have fixed boundaries, while voting districts are redrawn every 10 or so years to attempt to keep the population of each district relatively equivalent in population. At least that's the theory. What really happens is that since those in Power draw the lines, they attempt to draw the boundaries such that they maintain or gain power.

Actually, voting in Britain is done by Parlimentary district, which is a lot smaller than a county. The names on the ballots are the candidates for Member of Parliment from that district.. The party which gets a majority of the parlimentary seats is requested by Mrs. Windsor to form a government. If no party gets a majority, the one with the largest number of seats tries to form a coalition government with one of the other parties. You don't vote directly for a party or Prime Minister (unless you happen to live in his or her district - the PM is an MP as well). And yes, redrawing parlimentary district boundaries is subject to the same partisan gerrymandering as congressional boundaries are in the US. Peter Trei