johng
Labour
Posts: 4,536
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Post by johng on May 6, 2024 0:20:40 GMT
Forgive a perhaps silly question. Why can votes not be counted in each polling station? Staffing. Counting in a central location means that Team 1 can do Ward 1, then Ward 4, then Ward 8, then Ward 11, then Ward 12, then Ward 17; all at the same times as Team 2 doing Ward 2, then Ward 5, then Ward 7, then Ward 10, then Ward 15; and Team 3 Doing Ward... erm... 3, 6, 9, 13, 14 and 16. And you'd also need to either book every polling station an addition unknown number of extra hours after 10pm, or somehow store the ballots securely at the polling station and book it for a second day to do the count.
In answer to OWL, it's just the way it's done in this country. It's actually very unusual globally to do it the way we do.
It's actually a tradition I quite like. Though I do think some flexibility should be introduced in constituencies/ districts with disparate islands.
On the other point, you'd, broadly speaking, have the same number of staff counting the same number of ballots without the logistical operation of moving boxes elsewhere. A central count centre doesn't necessarily make it much more efficient. Booking venues until later at night should be no issue at all. Though booking for a second day would.
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Post by relique on May 6, 2024 4:51:43 GMT
Yes, what we had until this election were quasi ward results for the Mayor and Assembly elections as the postal votes received from across each borough?/assembly constituency? were allocated to random polling stations within that borough?/assembly constituency? Unless you are a political nerd you like some of us then you wouldn’t know that as the spreadsheets on the London Elects spreadsheet certainly don’t show that. Better something than nothing but if you are going to do it then do it properly with all postal votes counted by ward and kept separate the on the day votes in each ward. Forgive a perhaps silly question. Why can votes not be counted in each polling station? This (I think) happens in France, is completed much faster, allows for consistent granular data, and is surely less of an administrative hassle? We vote very differently than in the UK. - we vote on sunday to allow an immense majority to vote between 8am and 6pm, which allows us to finish the count in two hours (in big cities counting may start at 8pm), - we have a very administrative country with local government (36000 communes with in total 500 000 local councillors and several million civil servants), which allows us to have a polling station for 1,000 to 2,000 registered voters, insuring the counting is short, - we have a very simple way to deal with ballots and verify them: each candidate has a different ballot so that verification of counts is quite easy and mistakes can be more easily remedied, But indeed, for each their own. I guess, as psephologists go, having a detailed analysis of voting patterns for 1000 to 2000 registered voters is quite nice. It's just a shame there are many less good psephologists in my country... An exemple of organisation for two different cities: City of 100,000 people About 1,400 civil servants About 50 local councillors About 50 polling station In each polling station, there is a président who needs to be a volunteer (not a civil servants): usually a local councillor. There needs to be a secretary and two assesseurs, usually in those communes civil servants although assesseurs can be volunteers (candidates can designate assesseurs). There is also usually a deputy secretary. So 1 councillor + 4 civil servants per polling station. 200 civil servants mobilised (and paid either in over Time or money) for 12 hours. We usually organise so that each get one hour off to go to vote and eat lunch. Other exemple: a small commune of 1,800 inhabitants (about 1,200 registered voters) About 15-20 local councillors 1 polling station Usually 2-3 administrative civil servants (the others are technical maintenance staff and people working in schools, day care...) There is an official président who usually is the mayor. The assesseurs are some of the deputy mayors. All day long they organise a planning with all councillors being mobilised for a couple of hours and the civil servants allowed a few hours off to go to lunch and vote if they don't live in the commune. Usually, everything is wrapped up at 8pm and the gendarmerie comes and collects the documents to give to the prefet for a final verification. But we usually phone the préfecture with the results early on to give them the news as soon as possible.
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Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on May 6, 2024 5:21:46 GMT
Forgive a perhaps silly question. Why can votes not be counted in each polling station? This (I think) happens in France, is completed much faster, allows for consistent granular data, and is surely less of an administrative hassle? We vote very differently than in the UK. - we vote on sunday to allow an immense majority to vote between 8am and 6pm, which allows us to finish the count in two hours (in big cities counting may start at 8pm), - we have a very administrative country with local government (36000 communes with in total 500 000 local councillors and several million civil servants), which allows us to have a polling station for 1,000 to 2,000 registered voters, insuring the counting is short, - we have a very simple way to deal with ballots and verify them: each candidate has a different ballot so that verification of counts is quite easy and mistakes can be more easily remedied, But indeed, for each their own. I guess, as psephologists go, having a detailed analysis of voting patterns for 1000 to 2000 registered voters is quite nice. It's just a shame there are many less good psephologists in my country... An exemple of organisation for two different cities: City of 100,000 people About 1,400 civil servants About 50 local councillors About 50 polling station In each polling station, there is a président who needs to be a volunteer (not a civil servants): usually a local councillor. There needs to be a secretary and two assesseurs, usually in those communes civil servants although assesseurs can be volunteers (candidates can designate assesseurs). There is also usually a deputy secretary. So 1 councillor + 4 civil servants per polling station. 200 civil servants mobilised (and paid either in over Time or money) for 12 hours. We usually organise so that each get one hour off to go to vote and eat lunch. Other exemple: a small commune of 1,800 inhabitants (about 1,200 registered voters) About 15-20 local councillors 1 polling station Usually 2-3 administrative civil servants (the others are technical maintenance staff and people working in schools, day care...) There is an official président who usually is the mayor. The assesseurs are some of the deputy mayors. All day long they organise a planning with all councillors being mobilised for a couple of hours and the civil servants allowed a few hours off to go to lunch and vote if they don't live in the commune. Usually, everything is wrapped up at 8pm and the gendarmerie comes and collects the documents to give to the prefet for a final verification. But we usually phone the préfecture with the results early on to give them the news as soon as possible. The current government here would have stopped reading out of anger at the mention of millions of civil servants.
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Post by matureleft on May 6, 2024 6:50:15 GMT
Forgive a perhaps silly question. Why can votes not be counted in each polling station? This (I think) happens in France, is completed much faster, allows for consistent granular data, and is surely less of an administrative hassle? We vote very differently than in the UK. - we vote on sunday to allow an immense majority to vote between 8am and 6pm, which allows us to finish the count in two hours (in big cities counting may start at 8pm), - we have a very administrative country with local government (36000 communes with in total 500 000 local councillors and several million civil servants), which allows us to have a polling station for 1,000 to 2,000 registered voters, insuring the counting is short, - we have a very simple way to deal with ballots and verify them: each candidate has a different ballot so that verification of counts is quite easy and mistakes can be more easily remedied, But indeed, for each their own. I guess, as psephologists go, having a detailed analysis of voting patterns for 1000 to 2000 registered voters is quite nice. It's just a shame there are many less good psephologists in my country... An exemple of organisation for two different cities: City of 100,000 people About 1,400 civil servants About 50 local councillors About 50 polling station In each polling station, there is a président who needs to be a volunteer (not a civil servants): usually a local councillor. There needs to be a secretary and two assesseurs, usually in those communes civil servants although assesseurs can be volunteers (candidates can designate assesseurs). There is also usually a deputy secretary. So 1 councillor + 4 civil servants per polling station. 200 civil servants mobilised (and paid either in over Time or money) for 12 hours. We usually organise so that each get one hour off to go to vote and eat lunch. Other exemple: a small commune of 1,800 inhabitants (about 1,200 registered voters) About 15-20 local councillors 1 polling station Usually 2-3 administrative civil servants (the others are technical maintenance staff and people working in schools, day care...) There is an official président who usually is the mayor. The assesseurs are some of the deputy mayors. All day long they organise a planning with all councillors being mobilised for a couple of hours and the civil servants allowed a few hours off to go to lunch and vote if they don't live in the commune. Usually, everything is wrapped up at 8pm and the gendarmerie comes and collects the documents to give to the prefet for a final verification. But we usually phone the préfecture with the results early on to give them the news as soon as possible. Your system seems to rely on trust more than ours does. From what I can tell elected (presumably partisan) officials play quite an active part in the voting supervision, verification, counting and communication of results? I sense that that would be viewed with suspicion here.
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andrea
Non-Aligned
Posts: 7,280
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Post by andrea on May 6, 2024 7:39:25 GMT
In Italy we count directly at polling stations too.
We have thousands of municipalities but not as much as France. We are at 7.896.
The municipality where I live ((7,500 inhabitants) is divided into 7 polling stations. All located in the same place though (the school). Generally polling stations are located in primary and lower secondary schools. Anyway they must be located in public buildings. It is generally primary or lower secondary schools because their buildings are owned by municipalities which are in charge of the local organization.
Each polling station have 1 president, 1 secretary, 4 scrutineers. The president is drawn by the local court of appeal from a list of citizens willing to serve. The secretary is named by the president. The scrutineers are named by the municipality. The methods to choose them vary. In some small municipalities, cllrs propose some names and they draw out of them; in some they draw from the list of jobseekers, some out of a list of people who signed up as willing to serve,.. They are paid. Presidents get 195 euros, scrutineers around 150 euros.
You also need 2 police men sent by the Home Office. They sleep at the polling station the night before the voting day (because polling stations are prepared on Saturday afternoon) and on Sunday (when we vote also on Monday or when the count is on Monday).
Votes are counted at the polling station either immediately after the poll close or the next day. Parties representatives can assist the counting in each polling station. When the count is finished, in each polling station, the president must fill the report on the results. The report is sent to the local prefecture (you give it to the two police men who will bring it there along with all the polling stuffs including the counted ballots).
I don't think we have a proper verification stage. Turnout is communicated based on register (because when a voter came in, the register is marked, with number of polling card and ID document written down next to his/her name). Actually, the two registers...the register for men and the register for women! That's why we have official communications of progressing turnout during the voting time. At each hour, the number of voters so far are written on the blackboard. When polling stations close, we just open the ballot box and throw all the ballots on the table. When I did the scrutineer job 10 years ago, the procedure was like that: one of the scrutineers take the ballot paper from the table, read at loud voice the vote, then passed it to another to check he didn't invent it and then the vote would be placed on the right pile. Parties's reps stand in from the table of the pile and so they can see the vote when the ballot is put at the top of the pile.
Ok, here is an example of an Italian counting:
this one is a more complicated one with both president of region, council list and preferences for council list (open lists) on the same ballot paper
They weren't just dividing into piles, but counting at the same time. The ladies with the register were saying loudly the number of votes for each presidential candidate, list and council candidate received so far. There was a list representative sitting next to the two scrutineers managing the register.
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Post by hullenedge on May 6, 2024 8:19:19 GMT
We vote very differently than in the UK. - we vote on sunday to allow an immense majority to vote between 8am and 6pm, which allows us to finish the count in two hours (in big cities counting may start at 8pm), - we have a very administrative country with local government (36000 communes with in total 500 000 local councillors and several million civil servants), which allows us to have a polling station for 1,000 to 2,000 registered voters, insuring the counting is short, - we have a very simple way to deal with ballots and verify them: each candidate has a different ballot so that verification of counts is quite easy and mistakes can be more easily remedied, But indeed, for each their own. I guess, as psephologists go, having a detailed analysis of voting patterns for 1000 to 2000 registered voters is quite nice. It's just a shame there are many less good psephologists in my country... An exemple of organisation for two different cities: City of 100,000 people About 1,400 civil servants About 50 local councillors About 50 polling station In each polling station, there is a président who needs to be a volunteer (not a civil servants): usually a local councillor. There needs to be a secretary and two assesseurs, usually in those communes civil servants although assesseurs can be volunteers (candidates can designate assesseurs). There is also usually a deputy secretary. So 1 councillor + 4 civil servants per polling station. 200 civil servants mobilised (and paid either in over Time or money) for 12 hours. We usually organise so that each get one hour off to go to vote and eat lunch. Other exemple: a small commune of 1,800 inhabitants (about 1,200 registered voters) About 15-20 local councillors 1 polling station Usually 2-3 administrative civil servants (the others are technical maintenance staff and people working in schools, day care...) There is an official président who usually is the mayor. The assesseurs are some of the deputy mayors. All day long they organise a planning with all councillors being mobilised for a couple of hours and the civil servants allowed a few hours off to go to lunch and vote if they don't live in the commune. Usually, everything is wrapped up at 8pm and the gendarmerie comes and collects the documents to give to the prefet for a final verification. But we usually phone the préfecture with the results early on to give them the news as soon as possible. Your system seems to rely on trust more than ours does. From what I can tell elected (presumably partisan) officials play quite an active part in the voting supervision, verification, counting and communication of results? I sense that that would be viewed with suspicion here. Back in 1978 Panorama covered the French Assembly elections. The mayor, also the Communist candidate, announced the results from the communes as they were chalked up on a board. He was declaring his own defeat as too many Socialist voters opted for the Gaullist(?) candidate on the second round.
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 13,723
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Post by J.G.Harston on May 6, 2024 10:19:49 GMT
Staffing. Counting in a central location means that Team 1 can do Ward 1, then Ward 4, then Ward 8, then Ward 11, then Ward 12, then Ward 17; all at the same times as Team 2 doing Ward 2, then Ward 5, then Ward 7, then Ward 10, then Ward 15; and Team 3 Doing Ward... erm... 3, 6, 9, 13, 14 and 16. And you'd also need to either book every polling station an addition unknown number of extra hours after 10pm, or somehow store the ballots securely at the polling station and book it for a second day to do the count.
In answer to OWL, it's just the way it's done in this country. It's actually very unusual globally to do it the way we do.
It's actually a tradition I quite like. Though I do think some flexibility should be introduced in constituencies/ districts with disparate islands.
On the other point, you'd, broadly speaking, have the same number of staff counting the same number of ballots without the logistical operation of moving boxes elsewhere. A central count centre doesn't necessarily make it much more efficient. Booking venues until later at night should be no issue at all. Though booking for a second day would.
As candidate/agent it would be impossible to rush between my eight polling district counts doing count observation stuff. At the very least, the count should be one location per electoral division. In Sheffield before they moved to a central count in 2004 (triggered by the all-ups), each ward's count was in one of the polling stations in each ward.
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 13,723
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Post by J.G.Harston on May 6, 2024 10:28:55 GMT
- we have a very administrative country with local government (36000 communes with in total 500 000 local councillors and several million civil servants), which allows us to have a polling station for 1,000 to 2,000 registered voters, insuring the counting is short, ensuring. insuring is putting things in place to recover after failure. ensuring is preventing the failure in the first place. You have local councillors running polling stations?!?! That would be horrifying here, and I think is most probably illegal. Undue electoral practices and all that. Hello, I'm councillor Joe Bloggs, here's your ballot paper. Yes, I'm councillor Joe Bloggs. Joe Bloggs. Your local councillor.
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johng
Labour
Posts: 4,536
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Post by johng on May 6, 2024 10:34:12 GMT
In answer to OWL, it's just the way it's done in this country. It's actually very unusual globally to do it the way we do.
It's actually a tradition I quite like. Though I do think some flexibility should be introduced in constituencies/ districts with disparate islands.
On the other point, you'd, broadly speaking, have the same number of staff counting the same number of ballots without the logistical operation of moving boxes elsewhere. A central count centre doesn't necessarily make it much more efficient. Booking venues until later at night should be no issue at all. Though booking for a second day would.
As candidate/agent it would be impossible to rush between my eight polling district counts doing count observation stuff. At the very least, the count should be one location per electoral division. In Sheffield before they moved to a central count in 2004 (triggered by the all-ups), each ward's count was in one of the polling stations in each ward.
There's no reason why subagents or other nominated persons couldn't be appointed for each polling station. Obviously the realities of that might be a bit more difficult for poorly resourced campaigns.
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Post by relique on May 6, 2024 10:35:24 GMT
Your system seems to rely on trust more than ours does. From what I can tell elected (presumably partisan) officials play quite an active part in the voting supervision, verification, counting and communication of results? I sense that that would be viewed with suspicion here. There are of course exemples of people trying to cheat. There are a few counter-measures: - each candidate can designate someone to stay all day to verify. Of course, given thé slow but effective disconnect between political parties and the people it's sometimes very hard to do. But in most local elections (even législatives) it's not uncommon that the two main candidates have such persons (municipal councils have opposition members...). - they would need a corruption pact with the civil servants, which is not unheard of but creates a very big risk of jailtime Préfets often cancel entire polling station results when there's a discrepancy or some (pertinent) complaint by an observer. In big élections (such as présidentiel) it has not much conséquences as all votes for the small station are cancelled and the numbers are too small to change the results. In smaller élections, though, it can trigger a by-election if the cancelled votes are greater than the margin between winner and loser (or in list élections if it would change the quota and the number elected per list). Most by élections, though, come from mistakes in campaign accounts that need to be sent after the election (and if not good, can result in candidates being forbidden to take part in the by-election)
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Post by relique on May 6, 2024 10:38:24 GMT
- we have a very administrative country with local government (36000 communes with in total 500 000 local councillors and several million civil servants), which allows us to have a polling station for 1,000 to 2,000 registered voters, insuring the counting is short, ensuring. insuring is putting things in place to recover after failure. ensuring is preventing the failure in the first place. You have local councillors running polling stations?!?! That would be horrifying here, and I think is most probably illegal. Undue electoral practices and all that. Hello, I'm councillor Joe Bloggs, here's your ballot paper. Yes, I'm councillor Joe Bloggs. Joe Bloggs. Your local councillor.Yes but just next to him, the opposition candidates are there, observe and participate. Of course insure/ensure. I must have been still half sleeping
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Post by finsobruce on May 6, 2024 10:38:26 GMT
- we have a very administrative country with local government (36000 communes with in total 500 000 local councillors and several million civil servants), which allows us to have a polling station for 1,000 to 2,000 registered voters, insuring the counting is short, ensuring. insuring is putting things in place to recover after failure. ensuring is preventing the failure in the first place. You have local councillors running polling stations?!?! That would be horrifying here, and I think is most probably illegal. Undue electoral practices and all that. Hello, I'm councillor Joe Bloggs, here's your ballot paper. Yes, I'm councillor Joe Bloggs. Joe Bloggs. Your local councillor."Ah, thanks for reminding me who not to vote for".
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Post by timrollpickering on May 6, 2024 10:48:31 GMT
There's no reason why subagents or other nominated persons couldn't be appointed for each polling station. Obviously the realities of that might be a bit more difficult for poorly resourced campaigns. IIUC the St Ives count last time had to abandon plans to count the Isles of Scilly boxes in the isles themselves because one candidate couldn't get a subagent there. The sheer number of polling stations we had on Thursday and the number of people I had available would make it an impossible task if I had to have someone who knew what they were doing not only for every single one but also able to virtually teleport from the end of Polling Day operations to the stations.
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Post by relique on May 6, 2024 10:53:51 GMT
ensuring. insuring is putting things in place to recover after failure. ensuring is preventing the failure in the first place. You have local councillors running polling stations?!?! That would be horrifying here, and I think is most probably illegal. Undue electoral practices and all that. Hello, I'm councillor Joe Bloggs, here's your ballot paper. Yes, I'm councillor Joe Bloggs. Joe Bloggs. Your local councillor."Ah, thanks for reminding me who not to vote for". At the last presidential élection, I was a civil servant in a polling station presided by a macronist local councillor. There's a rule that citizens must take at least 2 different ballot papers on the table (we don't hand them out) or none at all (people are mailed the ballots with the litterature), thus ensuring some kind of secrecy of vote. People were really not embarassed AT ALL to take 1 Mélenchon and 1 Roussel (PCF) in front of the macronist councillor. - mainly because they didn't know him and probably thought he was another civil servant - also because they might not know what thé local majority's politics are, as a lot of them vote only at the presidential level - and probably also to show their convictions to every one.
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Post by johnloony on May 6, 2024 14:14:21 GMT
To a very great extent, the way in which the 32 boroughs are combined to form 14 constituencies is a process which writes itself. If the basic idea is that the 14 constituencies should be of approximately equal electorates, there are no other reasonable alternative combinations which don’t have at least some wildly orquard constituencies or outliers in the variation of their electorates. As it is, the City & East and North East constituencies are significantly larger than the other 12, and the only realistic alternative set of boundaries would be to rearrange the whole of north-east London so that there would be 15 constituencies instead of 14. That would have to be a specific political decision (not just a normal-style boundary review) because it would mean reducing the list section to 10 seats instead of 11, or expanding the whole Assembly by 1 or 2 seats, or changing the whole system to something else completely. It is possible to rearrange the seats in the East and North of London without creading an extrea seat, though I'm not sure it would especially improve equality of electorates. 1 Havering & Barking 2 Redbridge & Waltham Forest 3 Newham & Tower Hamlets (plus City of you like) 4 Hackney, Islington & Haringey 5 West Central which gains Camden in addition to the existing boroughs 6 Barnet & Enfield Everything else unchanged The West Central seat would probably be as oversized as City & East is now*, although these seats seem more natural (Barking & Dagenham with Havering for example and the North East seat not stretching from the city to Chingford) *I'm only working with the parliamentary electorate and those qualified to vote in local elections only will be especially high in that area Here is a map of your proposal (The paint thingy didn't fill it in properly for some reason, so it's a bit messy): By my calculations*, your proposed electorates (the average GLA constituency electorate being 1.000) would be: Havering & BD 0.762 Redbridge & WF: 0.932 Newham & TH & City: 1.019 Hackney, Islington & Haringey: 1.168 West Central: 1.146 Barnet & Enfield: 1.116 which has an average deviation of 0.126 compared with the electorates of the current constituencies being (in the area of those 6): Havering & Redbridge: 0.914 North East: 1.192 City & East: 1.429 Enfield & Haringey: 0.908 West Central: 0.816 Barnet & Camden: 0.940 which has an average deviation of 0.174 so your proposal (a) gets rid of the extreme inequality of the current City & East (b) is slighly more equal overall (c) still has some substantial inequalities. * I was working with the electorates of the GLA constituencies from May 2024, but the electorates of the individual boroughs from December 2022 (because I couldn't find the current electorates of the boroughs individually), so I had to squidge my calculations slightly in small fractions. A few years ago I think I worked out a more equal scheme for 15 constituencies instead of 14, but I didn't keep / don't remember the details, so one would have to start again at the beginning for that one.
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Post by evergreenadam on May 6, 2024 19:42:26 GMT
It is possible to rearrange the seats in the East and North of London without creading an extrea seat, though I'm not sure it would especially improve equality of electorates. 1 Havering & Barking 2 Redbridge & Waltham Forest 3 Newham & Tower Hamlets (plus City of you like) 4 Hackney, Islington & Haringey 5 West Central which gains Camden in addition to the existing boroughs 6 Barnet & Enfield Everything else unchanged The West Central seat would probably be as oversized as City & East is now*, although these seats seem more natural (Barking & Dagenham with Havering for example and the North East seat not stretching from the city to Chingford) *I'm only working with the parliamentary electorate and those qualified to vote in local elections only will be especially high in that area Here is a map of your proposal (The paint thingy didn't fill it in properly for some reason, so it's a bit messy): By my calculations*, your proposed electorates (the average GLA constituency electorate being 1.000) would be: Havering & BD 0.762 Redbridge & WF: 0.932 Newham & TH & City: 1.019 Hackney, Islington & Haringey: 1.168 West Central: 1.146 Barnet & Enfield: 1.116 which has an average deviation of 0.126 compared with the electorates of the current constituencies being (in the area of those 6): Havering & Redbridge: 0.914 North East: 1.192 City & East: 1.429 Enfield & Haringey: 0.908 West Central: 0.816 Barnet & Camden: 0.940 which has an average deviation of 0.174 so your proposal (a) gets rid of the extreme inequality of the current City & East (b) is slighly more equal overall (c) still has some substantial inequalities. * I was working with the electorates of the GLA constituencies from May 2024, but the electorates of the individual boroughs from December 2022 (because I couldn't find the current electorates of the boroughs individually), so I had to squidge my calculations slightly in small fractions. A few years ago I think I worked out a more equal scheme for 15 constituencies instead of 14, but I didn't keep / don't remember the details, so one would have to start again at the beginning for that one. I quite like this proposal, it reduces the worst inequality and gives some room for future growth in the electorate in East London, which will almost certainly happen. It also removes the crossing of the Lea Valley between Hackney and WF which was always a bit awkward. The pairings look acceptable in terms of local identity, probably more so than the existing arrangements and would have worked well as an interim solution for this election. The administrative workload for the West Central Assembly Member would be huge though - four different Boroughs to deal with. I suspect that the LGBCE did not find a solution with 14 Assembly constituencies that was satisfactory to them in terms of electoral equality. I can’t remember what they worked to when the GLA was established, possibly +/-10% as for local government wards. So that’s why they said it’s up to Central Government to instruct them as to what they want to do in terms of the total number of Assembly seats. I don’t know if 15 Assembly constituencies would suddenly make the electoral equality issue better, given the size of the building blocks we have to work with and whether the Borough combinations that might be necessary would be too awful to accept.
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Post by John Chanin on May 7, 2024 5:40:38 GMT
Given that the list irons out any inconsistency in constituency sizes, I don't think we have to be worried about it.
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Post by LDCaerdydd on May 7, 2024 8:28:37 GMT
Does anyone have (or can calculate) the full D'Hondt breakdown? Who would have won seats 12, 13 and 14 etc if they'd existed?
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Post by Peter Wilkinson on May 7, 2024 8:47:27 GMT
Does anyone have (or can calculate) the full D'Hondt breakdown? Who would have won seats 12, 13 and 14 etc if they'd existed? I am not quite sure that the method I've used does d'Hondt absolutely correctly and I only carried it on a few more places, but what I got was: 12 | Labour | 13 | Labour | 14 | Reform | 15 | Conservative | 16 | Liberal Democrat | 17 | Green |
The next few seats would have alternated rather lopsidedly between Labour and Conservative (roughly in a 3:2 ratio) - the 5% rule would have stopped Rejoin EU getting (I think) seat 21 and the Greens would have got their next seat about three after that, with the other eligible parties having to wait longer still.
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Post by jamesdoyle on May 7, 2024 9:16:52 GMT
Given that the list irons out any inconsistency in constituency sizes, I don't think we have to be worried about it. It's a long time since I've done this sort of maths, but I *think* i recall that the list tends to iron out imbalances, but that it depends on the length of the list (the longer, the smoother) and the size of the initial imbalance (the bigger it is the more lists slots it takes to iron out). It's a bit like drawing a freehand line with a bump in in, and then drawing another line above it, and another above that and so on. The more lines you draw, the smoother the last one is, and the bigger the bump, the more lines it takes to get to any given smoothness. So, TL;DR, it would still be better to have more equal constituencies to start with.
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