Gerrymandering

A 2006 decision in Prince Edward Island—to discard two independent revisions of the electoral boundaries and approve a proposal commissioned by the governing party—has drawn a lot of attention from coast to coast. Victoria’s "Times Colonist," for instance, published a cartoon in which PEI changes shape until it turns into a screw nail.

But the practice of drawing new constituency maps to gain political advantage is not new. Political scientists call it gerrymandering. In 1812, Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts imposed a law that artificially divided the State into new Senatorial districts. This division led to the election of 29 Senators from the Governor’s party and 11 from the opposition, although 50,164 electors voted for the former and 51,766 for the latter. This discrepancy didn’t go unnoticed, and neither did the strange shapes of the new constituencies, one of which looked like a salamander, or a Gerrymander—as the editor of a local newspaper was inspired to call it. The term spread quickly and became popular all over the world.

Gerrymandering was not too common in the past, but it appears more frequently since computer cartography has developed. In 1982 in California, for instance, the boundary of a constituency, drawn to the advantage of the incumbent candidate, was a 385-sided figure. Gerrymandering is also blamed in the 1990 election to the House of Representatives in Texas, where one party won a large majority of seats against the rival party, although the vote was almost equal, 1,083,351 to 1,080,788. Last year’s elections in Italy led to accusations of gerrymandering against the government of Silvio Berlusconi. Apart from changing the electoral voting system to its advantage, the governing party and its allies also redrew the constituencies, hoping to remain in power. Their efforts, however, didn’t bear fruit. Berlusconi’s main opponent, Romano Prodi, won the 2006 Italian elections in spite of all the backstairs manipulations.

As the recent Italian experience shows, gerrymandering does not ensure victory. Unless the patterns of several consecutive elections point at stable population groups that support a certain party, it is difficult to decide how gerrymandering affects an election outcome. Especially in Canada, where the first-past-the-post system is used, it is rarely possible to tell whether the result was twisted by the voting model or by the new constituency division. This difficulty occurs because the first-past-the-post method can create large discrepancies between the popular vote and the distribution of seats in the legislative body. No wonder that in a referendum held in 2005 in British Columbia, 58 percent of those who went to the polls expressed their wish to change the electoral system. Ontario is also moving in the direction of a referendum on voting.

Gerrymandering can lead to a lot of bitterness between rival parties and divide the population, the more so when these parties are built along ethnic, religious, or racial lines. An example in this sense is Northern Ireland, where a religious minority believes, rightly or wrongly, to be deprived by its share of power. Political scientists often cite the three constituencies of Derry City in the 1960s. Due to gerrymandering, the Nationalist Party, backed by Catholics, obtained 8 seats and the Unionist Party, backed by Protestants, won 12 seats. This result contrasted with the 14,429 votes cast for the Nationalists and 8,781 for the Unionists.

Internal ethnic, religious, or racial tensions can lead to dangerous escalations when gerrymandering becomes an issue. To avoid undesired conflicts, governments are entitled to pass clear laws about how and under what circumstances boundary revisions can be made, appoint non-partisan committees for this purpose, and try to avoid any perception of bias. This is the only way to ensure that democracy is respected.