All of us are equal but some of us are more equal than others
As we come up to the national elections no doubt the effect that transport has on the environment is uppermost on your mind.
The question is, of course, which party is most likely to help us reduce the impact transport has on the environment?
Well, over the next few weeks I hope we can help you find out.
But before that we ought to be asking whether our elections make any sense. Are they free and fair?
We have 646 representatives (MPs) in our lower chamber of our legislature which we call the House of Commons. Each of the MPs is elected to represent a constituency. Each one of these constituencies contains a similar number of people eligible to vote. Indeed we have a special government quango, the Boundary Commission, whose only purpose is to ensure that all the constituencies are the same size. You would think the task would be easy – but that is just where you would be wrong.
The evidence is that the task of making constituencies at least a similar size is fraught with difficulty. After years of deliberation, oodles of consultations and reports the Boundary Commission has produced the “equal” sized constituencies ready for the general election expected in May.
Now how much bigger do you think that the largest constituency is compared to the smallest? Go on have a guess. Is it 10% larger? Or even 20% larger. Would you find it acceptable that it is over 50% larger? Would you be concerned that the largest constituency in Britain is over double the size of the smallest – so that if the largest constituency were cut in half both the new constituencies would be bigger than the current smallest?
You would think that if you had the job of producing 626 equal-sized constituencies then you would manage to keep them within a decent range of each other. Would you think you had done a perfect job if your largest constituency ended up containing over five times the number of voters than your smallest constituency? I hope not.
But the Boundary Commission has done just that. The largest constituency in Britain, Isle of Wight, has 109,000 electors and the smallest, Western Isles, has 21,000.
So the elections are crooked from the outset – long before the votes are even cast – let alone counted.
Previous article: To buy or not to buy biofuel (Monday, 8th March, 2010)
Comments
Constituency sizes
It is all very well choosing the two extreme examples of the Isle of Wight and the Western Isles but there has to be a balance between number of electors and area covered. Some Scottish constitencies would be immense in area if they were to have as large an electorate as densely populated urban areas. This would mean that lacked any community identity and make it very difficult for the MP to cover the area. Maybe the Isle of Wight should have two constituencies - it certainly would not make sense to combine a bit of it with the mainland. Distribution of sizes around the median would be a better way of judging whether the Boundary Commission has done a good job or not. Adjusting boundaries can, of course, affect the outcome of close elections but a bigger issue to my mind is the first past the post electoral system which grossly under represents smaller parties.
Rural or Urban
There is a case for very rural seats having a smaller number of electors for the reasons you have given and, like you, I would not recommend the Isle of Wight sharing a seat with the mainland. However, there are also a number of urban seats which have very few electors.
Your suggestion that this problem is overshadowed by our continued use of the first-past-the-post system in national elections is probably true and furthermore almost all versions of proportion representation make the task of creating constituencies with equal electors far easier. More on that subject on a later day.