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Post by tiberius on May 1, 2018 20:21:09 GMT
Special pleading BS. If you advocate PR, then this is the moment to do away with the BS. Give me a reason to support your proposal. I don't actually personally support party list PR for Westminster elections. But that's not the point of this exercise, from my point of view at the very least - I understand that others who do support it should have a chance to toy around with this 435 hypothetical. The point of this is to see how constituencies would look like with a higher quota set at this level. It's a mapmaking, constituency-drawing exercise open to all. I do not ordain any specific electoral system that goes along with this - that's in the eye of the beholder, and if I forced myself to pick one to choose before opening this thread, I probably could never pick. I prefer AV to PR anyway, and don't think FPTP is all that bad - it's not a terrible electoral system. So if you think I'm someone who thinks the UK should go copy Denmark's electoral system, you are misinformed. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 1, 2018 21:07:22 GMT
Certainly there must be a reason why the island constituencies have been protected in successive legislation passed by the Government, and (as far as I know) have never had a seat in common with the mainland. If it was a dozen island constituencies off the coast that were massively under quota, then we'd have a problem. But there's only 2 of them. Not never no. The Western Isles has existed as a single constituency since 1918. Prior to that bits of it were included in their respective county seats (ie most of Lewis in Ross & Cromarty (and before that in Ross-shire) and Southern Lewis and the rest of the islands in Inverness-shire) |
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Post by YL on May 1, 2018 21:14:02 GMT
Not never no. The Western Isles has existed as a single constituency since 1918. Prior to that bits of it were included in their respective county seats (ie most of Lewis in Ross & Cromarty (and before that in Ross-shire) and Southern LewisHarris and the rest of the islands in Inverness-shire) FTFY. |
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2018 21:30:19 GMT
Special pleading BS. If you advocate PR, then this is the moment to do away with the BS. Give me a reason to support your proposal. I'd be supportive of retaining the Scottish island constituencies, but where the voters in them can't vote for list seats. Although if that were to be the case, it would have to be clear that the constituents prefer such an arrangement (to being part of a larger, ordinary constituency). |
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2018 21:34:45 GMT
I would also make provision for a looser, special 25% band in use in the Highlands council area. It may be worth using a Norwegian style apportionment system. 1 voter (or possibly resident, I'm not sure) = 1 point, 1 sq. km = 1.8 points. In Norway, the number of points decides how many seats are apportioned to each county. In this scenario, the size of constituencies could be decided by a set number of points +/- 10% or so, allowing super rural constituencies to not be overwhelmingly large, whilst not introducing special case rules or arbitrary cut-off points. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 1, 2018 21:56:40 GMT
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Post by tiberius on May 1, 2018 22:09:51 GMT
I would also make provision for a looser, special 25% band in use in the Highlands council area. It may be worth using a Norwegian style apportionment system. 1 voter (or possibly resident, I'm not sure) = 1 point, 1 sq. km = 1.8 points. In Norway, the number of points decides how many seats are apportioned to each county. In this scenario, the size of constituencies could be decided by a set number of points +/- 10% or so, allowing super rural constituencies to not be overwhelmingly large, whilst not introducing special case rules or arbitrary cut-off points. I'm wary of making the rules too complicated... In the case of the Highlands, the wards within that Caithness seat have 80,598 electors, and the Inverness seat has 91,471. The lower band is 82,523. You need to add one of the three bordering wards to get it over, and adding any one of them makes the Inverness seat unworkable (exactly the kind of seat that the looser +/- 20% band is supposed to get rid of). Hence the special +/- 25% band. Elsewhere, there's more wiggle room, so the usual rules can apply, which allows the Fife county line to be be preserved, among other things that help make things more workable in Alba. |
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Post by tiberius on May 1, 2018 22:23:12 GMT
Certainly there must be a reason why the island constituencies have been protected in successive legislation passed by the Government, and (as far as I know) have never had a seat in common with the mainland. If it was a dozen island constituencies off the coast that were massively under quota, then we'd have a problem. But there's only 2 of them. Not never no. The Western Isles has existed as a single constituency since 1918. Prior to that bits of it were included in their respective county seats (ie most of Lewis in Ross & Cromarty (and before that in Ross-shire) and Southern Lewis and the rest of the islands in Inverness-shire) Yeah, my bad. At least I was (mostly) right about the constituency of Orkney and Shetland! (which doesn't seem to have had mainland territory ever. However the Northern Burghs seat had Kirkwall, so it's untrue to insinuate that the island group never had a seat in the common with the mainland) |
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Post by greenchristian on May 2, 2018 0:11:04 GMT
Interesting that your Solihull constituency loses two wards out of Solihull proper. |
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Post by Foggy on May 2, 2018 0:28:18 GMT
Special pleading BS. If you advocate PR, then this is the moment to do away with the BS. Give me a reason to support your proposal. I'd be supportive of retaining the Scottish island constituencies, but where the voters in them can't vote for list seats. Although if that were to be the case, it would have to be clear that the constituents prefer such an arrangement (to being part of a larger, ordinary constituency). I believe this is known as the Aosta Valley solution. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 2, 2018 7:11:24 GMT
Interesting that your Solihull constituency loses two wards out of Solihull proper. The alternative would have been to combine two largely rural wards with part of Birmingham which I didn't want to do (though had I done so they would have gone with 'North Solihull' which would mean Solihull borough as a whole would provide a slight majority of voters with just three Birmingham wards needed - presumably Shard End, Sheldpn and Stechford &Yardley North which would work OK) |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 2, 2018 8:08:39 GMT
I guess another alternative would be to take the existing Meriden seat and adding Elmdon and Lyndon from Solihull and replacing them with Acocks Green, Hall Green and Springfield (with Sheldon and South Yardley replacing Chelmsley Wood in the Stechford seat (which you'd probably then call Yardley). Still involves crossing the boundary between Solihull proper and Birmingham though but I don't see a problem with that given how meaningless the boundary is in practical terms at that point.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 3, 2018 11:37:30 GMT
Yes, but most of the current local authorities in the Six Counties are a nonsense. Oh, and it's "Bri dgend", "Torf aen" and "Middlesbrough" (no second 'O').  Part of the problem is that Boundary Assistant doesn't mark county boundaries. Given Northern Ireland's peculiarity, I would easily be willing to consider using traditional counties instead of local authorities (both might be good guides, for differing reasons), but eh, tough luck. But really, I shouldn't complain too much. Boundary Assistant is a wonderful tool and nothing can change that. Difficult in the West as always but works out OK otherwise  |
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Post by tiberius on May 4, 2018 21:29:12 GMT
 Northern Scotland  Central Belt  Southern Scotland |
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2018 7:38:59 GMT
Northern Scotland Central Belt Southern Scotland If the 20% threshold is your preferred option these constituencies are very good. I'd make a few changes here and there but I'm on the whole impressed. |
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Post by Eastwood on May 10, 2018 19:42:57 GMT
That 3 Authority Pentlands seat is pretty ugly looking with bits of Livingston and Penicuik thrown in with SW Edinburgh.
If one West Lothian ward needs to go in with Edinburgh either Linlithgow or Broxburn would be a much better fit in Edinburgh West.
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