Constituency electoral
An constituency, electoral district or legislative district is a territorial subdivision for electing members to a legislative body. Generally, only voters (constituents) residing within the district are permitted to vote in an election held there. From a single district, a single member or multiple members can be elected. Members may be elected by a representative majority system, runoff or proportional electoral system, or other voting method. Members may be elected through a direct election under universal suffrage, an indirect election, or another form of suffrage. Derived from the natural dynamics of demography, constituencies change over time: they grow, decrease, new ones are created or disappear. Because of this variation, it is necessary to periodically review the population balance in the electoral districts.
The task of defining electoral districts is not easy, since it implies taking into consideration various social and economic aspects, legal issues, complex methodological and technical aspects that avoid biases that may inadvertently generate electoral inequity.
The size of a constituency should not be confused with its territorial extension or its demographic volume. The size or magnitude of a constituency is called the number of seats assigned to it. Constituencies can be classified, based on their magnitude, as single-member and multi-member.
Types of constituencies
- The Uninominal circumscriptions are those who choose a single deputy. Used for legislative elections in Australia, United States (Federal Congress and State Legislatures), Canada, United Kingdom, France (second electoral round) and India.
- The plurinominal circumscriptions are those that choose two or more seats. A variant of this second type is the single constituency, where the electorate of the whole state territory is considered as the only electoral constituency (Israel and the Netherlands have a single constituency, as do most countries in the elections to the European Parliament).
Constituency size effects
To determine the effects exerted by constituencies, it is very important to take into account their magnitude, that is, the number of representatives elected per constituency. If we leave aside the possible influence that the other configuring elements of the electoral system exert on the electoral results, the different magnitudes of the electoral constituencies produce the following effect: the larger the constituency, the greater the proportionality. On the contrary, the election in pentanominal constituencies and even smaller ones, is a majority election (of the type of electoral systems that establish majorities). Changes in the size of electoral constituencies may consequently imply a change in the type of electoral system.
The size of the constituency also has to do with the relationship between the voter and the chosen one in terms of a greater or lesser proximity, a greater or lesser degree of knowledge between one and the other. Thus, a more or less personal meaning can be attributed to the vote, that is, trust in a person, or an ideological vote in favor of a political party, its ideological and pragmatic offer, in favor of partisan lists. In this way, the type of constituency also influences the structure of political parties and the significance that political parties have in political representation.
Effects of the geographical division of constituencies
A problem much debated politically is the geographical distribution of electoral constituencies. The division of an electoral territory into constituencies can be done from the most diverse points of view. Historical, administrative and geographical considerations are certainly important criteria. The history of elections, however, abounds in examples that show how even division in electoral constituencies is the result of purely political causes. As a general rule, the most important thing to know the factors that cause biases in political representation is to know if there is a «representation key» underlying the division of the electoral territory into electoral constituencies. The question is, therefore, to know if in all constituencies the same relationship exists between the number of voters or inhabitants and the seats. Only ballot procedures that provide for the award of a seat by a specified number of votes, proportional representation systems with nationwide equalization of seats, and single district systems are immune to inequalities that arise on the basis of division of the constituencies. (Nohlen, 2000).
A distinction must be made between active and passive forms of differentiation in political representation. The active form is found, for example, in provisions, even constitutional ones, that establish a certain number of seats for each constituency. This regulation often produces a representation bias in favor of the small constituencies found in the least populated (agrarian, conservative preferences) regions of the country. The passive form corresponds to the omission of a new distribution of districts as an adaptation to demographic development.
If the effects produced by the manipulation of the representation key are added to the effects produced by different magnitudes of constituencies, then, important distortions in political representation can be produced.
The form of manipulated electoral geometry is known as gerrymandering. The concept goes back to Gerry, who managed to cut out a constituency tailored for him in the salamander-like city of Boston. The gerrymandering implies the intentional, not accidental, arrangement of the limits of electoral constituencies according to the geographical dispersion of the electorate of a candidate or a party, without necessarily having to manipulate the representation key.
In majority electoral systems whose base is commonly the single-member constituency, the Boundary Commissions (Boundary Commissions) that monitor the proper correspondence between population and electoral constituencies and are in charge, if necessary, the redrawing of constituencies, have become important institutions in ensuring constitutionally unimpeachable elections, provided they have full autonomy and the power to impose fairness criteria (see Johnston 1999).
Majority and proportional electoral system
They usually coincide, although not always, on the one hand, the single-member constituency and the majority formulas, and on the other hand, the multi-member constituency and the proportional formulas. In favor of single-member constituencies, the greater approach and political responsibility of the representative to the electorate is argued to ensure their re-election and a better recognition of the candidates by voters, the population density of a constituency also influences its proximity. Against it, it is affirmed that it promotes gerrymandering. Regarding the multi-member constituencies, arguments are expressed in the opposite direction.
The higher the number of seats assigned to a constituency, the more precision there will be in the proportionality of the electoral system (Mackenzie, 1962), while the rest of the elements of the system remain identical. Douglas W. Rae (1977) warns us that too much attention is generally paid to the effects of electoral formulas, while too little relevance is given to the effects of constituency magnitudes. Along with the size of the constituency, other influencing variables are the number of competing parties with effective weight and the size of the representative assembly, which determines the number of seats to be allocated among the constituencies. The degree of disproportionality tends to grow when the size of the assembly of representatives decreases. The disproportionality of an electoral system can increase when some constituencies receive more seats in relation to their demographic volume than other constituencies (Gallagher, 1991). This usually happens when there is an overrepresentation of rural areas to the detriment of urban areas. Proportionality will be better reflected when the distribution of seats between constituencies is made based on population and not based on territorial criteria.
Almost always, constituencies are mutually exclusive, so that a voter is part of only one constituency. However, there are electoral systems that contemplate various levels of overlapping constituencies, articulating a type of constituency at one level which overlaps with another type of constituency located on another level (Germany, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Greece, Belgium, Norway and Italy). Then, the allocation of seats is carried out in two or more successive phases and in two or more different instances. Usually, there are two levels of circumscriptions (more than two can coexist): the one that contains the circumscriptions of the different territories and the one that consists of a single circumscription that overlaps those of lower levels and in which the second phase of seat distribution.
Manipulations in constituency design are a known fact; among the existing possibilities, the most common are the unequal distribution of seats/deputies and gerrymandering. The gerrymandering technique takes its name from Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts in 1812 and from the salamander shape that one of the state's districts adopted, in order to benefit his Jeffersonian Republican Party. Salamander redistricting can be built using three techniques: by concentrating the opposition vote in a few districts to dilute its power outside of districts that contain an overwhelming majority of opposition voters; diluting the opposition vote among many districts by preventing it from having the majority vote in as many districts as possible; drawing motley district boundaries to make majority vote of distant groups of citizens who would otherwise be in the minority.