Proportional Representation: A Study in Methods of Election

by John H. Humphreys

The importance of boundaries.

All these anomalies can be traced to the same cause—that with a single-member system the whole of the representation of a constituency must necessarily be to the majority of the electors, whether that majority be large or small. It directly follows that the results of elections often depend not so much upon the actual strength of political parties, as upon the manner in which that strength is distributed over the country. If that strength is evenly distributed, then the minority may be crushed in every constituency; if unevenly distributed any result is possible. In the latter case the result may be considerably influenced by the manner in which the constituencies are arranged. A slight change in the line of the boundaries of a constituency might easily make a difference of 50 votes, whilst "to carry the dividing line from North to South, instead of from East to West, would, in many localities, completely alter the character of the representation." [9] An example will make this statement clear. Take a town with 13,000 Liberal and 12,000 Conservative electors and divide it into five districts of 5000 electors each. If there is a section of the town in which the Liberals largely preponderate—and it often happens that the strength of one or other of the parties is concentrated in a particular area—the net result of the election in five districts will depend upon the way in which the boundary lines are drawn. The possible results of two different distributions may be shown in an extreme form thus:—

Constituency Libs. Cons. 1st. 4,000 1,000 Lib. victory. 2nd. 2,400 2,600 Cons. " 3rd. 2,300 2,700 " " 4th. 2,200 2,800 " " 5th. 2,100 2,900 " " ——— ——— 13,000 12,000

Constituency Libs. Cons. 1st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. victory. 2st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 3st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 4th. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 5th. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " ——— ——— 13,000 12,000

The gerrymander.

With one set of boundaries the area in which the Liberals largely preponderate might be enclosed in one constituency. The Liberals might obtain a majority of 3000 in this constituency but lose the other four seats. If, however, the boundary lines were so arranged that each constituency included a portion of this excessively Liberal area, the Liberals might obtain the whole of the five seats. In both cases the result of the election would fail to give a true presentation of the real opinions of the town. The influence of boundaries in determining the results of an election has been clearly realized in the United States for more than a century. Professor Commons states that whenever the periodical rearrangement of constituencies takes place the boundaries are "gerrymandered." "Every apportionment Act," says he, "that has been passed in this or any other country has involved inequality; and it would be absurd to ask a political party to pass such an Act, and give the advantage of the inequality to the opposite party. Consequently, every apportionment Act involves more or less of the gerrymander. The gerrymander is simply such a thoughtful construction of districts as will economize the votes of the party in power by giving it small majorities in a large number of districts, and coop up the opposing party with overwhelming majorities in a small number of districts…. Many of the worst gerrymanders have been so well designed that they come close within all constitutional requirements." [10] Although the National Congress has stated that the district for congressional elections must be a compact and contiguous territory, the law is everywhere disregarded.

The word "gerrymander" has found its way into English journalism. It was used by Liberals in their criticism of Mr. Balfour's abortive redistribution scheme of 1905, and has been equally used by Unionists in 1909 in their criticism of Mr. Harcourt's London Elections Bill. On neither occasion was the word used in its original meaning, and, although its history is to be found in most works on electoral methods, the story may, perhaps, be repeated with advantage:—

"The term Gerrymander dates from the year 1811, when Elbridge Gerry was Governor of Massachusetts, and the Democratic, or, as it was then termed, the Republican party, obtained a temporary ascendency in the State. In order to secure themselves in the possession of the Government, the party in power passed the famous law of 11 February 1812, providing for a new division of the State into senatorial districts, so contrived that in as many districts as possible the Federalists should be outnumbered by their opponents. To effect this all natural and customary lines were disregarded, and some parts of the State, particularly the counties of Worcester and Essex, presented similar examples of political geography. It is said that Gilbert Stuart, seeing in the office of the Columbian Centinel an outline of the Essex outer district, nearly encircling the rest of the country, added with his pencil a beak to Salisbury, and claws to Salem and Marblehead, exclaiming, 'There, that will do for a salamander!' 'Salamander!' said Mr. Russell, the editor: 'I call it a Gerrymander!' The mot obtained vogue, and a rude cut of the figure published in the Centinel and in the Salem Gazette, with the natural history of the monster duly set forth, served to fix the word in the political vocabulary of the country. So efficient was the law that at the elections of 1812, 50,164 Democratic voters elected twenty-nine senators against eleven elected by 51,766 Federalists; and Essex county, which, when voting as a single district had sent five Federalists to the Senate, was now represented in that body by three Democrats and two Federalists." [11]

Mr. Balfour's scheme did not involve a political rearrangement of boundaries, and the word "gerrymandering" was thus incorrectly employed in relation to it, but so long as we retain a system of single-member constituencies a Redistribution Bill will always invite suspicion because of the possibilities of influencing the arrangement of constituencies which such a measure affords. Instructions are usually given to boundary commissioners to attach due consideration "to community or diversity of interests, means of communication, physical features, existing electoral boundaries, sparsity or density of population;" [12] but although such instructions are at once reasonable and just, they would not prevent, and indeed might be used to facilitate, a gerrymander in the American sense of the term were such a proceeding determined upon. It is quite conceivable that a mining district in which one party had a very large majority might be surrounded by an area in which the political conditions were more balanced, but in which the opposite party had a small majority. If that mining area was, in accordance with the wording of these instructions, treated as one constituency because of its community of interests and the surrounding area divided into three or more districts, the minority would in all probability obtain a majority of seats.

The modern gerrymander