CDR: Re: Close Elections and Causality

Trei, Peter ptrei at rsasecurity.com
Tue Nov 14 13:16:41 PST 2000



> petro[SMTP:petro at bounty.org] wrote:
> 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.
> 
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





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