CDR: Re: Close Elections and Causality

petro petro at bounty.org
Tue Nov 14 13:00:02 PST 2000


Mr. May:
>At 10:20 AM +0000 11/14/00, Ken Brown wrote:
>>
>>
>>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.
-- 
A quote from Petro's Archives:
**********************************************
"Despite almost every experience I've ever had with federal 
authority, I keep imagining its competence."
John Perry Barlow





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