Equalizing isn’t about equality

Published: Thursday, February 4th 2010

Reluctant Reformer Cameron sidesteps main problems of voting system.

The Electoral Reform Society has condemned David Cameron’s proposed amendment to the Constitutional Renewal Bill, a response to government moves to table proposals to offer a referendum on the voting system.

Writing in the Telegraph today Cameron expressed his wish that “every vote weighs the same” while simultaneously dismissing the need for radical electoral reform. [1]

Conservative plans to “reduce and equalise” Commons seats have been widely judged as targeting labour seats in England’s inner cities and Scotland and Wales.  [2]
 

The Society’s Chief Executive Dr Ken Ritchie said:
 

Notes to editors:

• Leading academics have conclusively disproved the idea that the current bias against the Conservatives in the electoral system stems mostly from differences in the sizes of constituencies. It is only a minor contributory factor (Michael Thrasher and co-authors demonstrate this in an article in Parliamentary Affairs, December 2009).
• The real reasons the Conservatives do badly out of the electoral system are more to do with the geography of vote distribution (Labour’s vote is efficiently distributed from the point of view of winning seats), tactical voting (that may be less of a factor in 2010) and differential turnout (fewer people turn out in safe Labour seats than safe Tory seats).
• The Boundary Commission already tries to equalise seats, with a margin of tolerance of 10 per cent either side. The procedure should be speeded up so that the numbers are more up to date, and in this we agree that some change is needed, but it is not clear why a 10 per cent standard is deemed unacceptable and a 5 per cent standard is much better.
• A lot of discussion about different constituency sizes centres on some ‘hard cases’, mostly islands. Cases like the Isle of Wight and Orkney and Shetland involve either having huge constituencies spanning natural geographical barriers, or putting up with a few anomalies.
• Electoral registration is much more complete in rural and suburban areas than the inner cities (as proved by Electoral Commission research in 2005). An instant change to constituency boundaries based on current inadequate registration data risks the accusation of discriminating against urban Labour-voting areas.
• Part of the reason the current system takes so long is that there is a lot of public consultation about boundary changes, so that bad ideas for constituencies (such as one that linked two areas either side of the Mersey Tunnel proposed in the last set of changes) can be thrown out. The Conservatives, by attempting to get changes through in one parliament, would have to abandon much of the scrutiny that proposals should receive.
• Conservative proposals mean that most constituencies will pay less regard to what most voters think of as community and natural boundaries, and change more frequently, destabilising the link between MPs and constituents.
• The United States has rigorous requirements for arithmetical equality of population in congressional districts, but the worst gerrymandering in the developed world. Equal sized constituencies cannot produce fair votes by themselves. 

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