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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 5, 2024 11:00:12 GMT
I suppose major electorate changes between boroughs might require a rejigging, though not much sign of that recently I think. I think City & East may be getting oversized. Given the average GLA constituency contains 5.36 parliamentary seats and there's 5 alone in Newham and Tower Hamlets now
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on May 5, 2024 11:15:58 GMT
Is there any mechanism for boundary changes to the constituencies, or are they cast in stone? Presumably they have to be composed of entire boroughs, in which case I suppose there's very little scope for change anyway. The LGBCE has it within their terms of reference. They looked briefly at it in early 2020 but concluded "Only by varying the numbers of constituency or changing other requirements of the legislation did it appear possible to bring significant improvement to the [electoral] imbalances". So until someone changes how the Assembly is elected they are not inclined to alter them.
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Post by johnloony on May 5, 2024 11:29:09 GMT
Is there any mechanism for boundary changes to the constituencies, or are they cast in stone? Presumably they have to be composed of entire boroughs, in which case I suppose there's very little scope for change anyway. 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.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 5, 2024 11:58:12 GMT
Is there any mechanism for boundary changes to the constituencies, or are they cast in stone? Presumably they have to be composed of entire boroughs, in which case I suppose there's very little scope for change anyway. 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
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therealriga
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Post by therealriga on May 5, 2024 12:02:08 GMT
I suppose major electorate changes between boroughs might require a rejigging, though not much sign of that recently I think. I think City & East may be getting oversized. Given the average GLA constituency contains 5.36 parliamentary seats and there's 5 alone in Newham and Tower Hamlets now By the 2020 Westminster electorates from Boundary Assistant, City&East had 495,574 putting it 25% above an average of 396,461. North East 481,175 (21.4% above.) Lambeth&Southwark (+7.4%) was the only other one above a 5% deviation. On the other side, West Central with 321,042 was 19% below average. Enfield&Haringey 9.3% below, Merton&Wandsworth 9.1% below, Greenwich&Lewisham 8.6% below, Brent&Harrow 8.1% below. Havering&Redbridge and Brent&Camden just outside a 5% deviation. With the recent fad for equalising electorates, I'm surprised they've allowed such large deviations, but fixing them to within 5% would require splitting boroughs.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2024 12:25:25 GMT
Pete Whitehead I'd be interested to see how you'd redraw the GLA constituencies. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
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Post by greatkingrat on May 5, 2024 12:31:08 GMT
They could at least move the City into West Central which would help a little.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 5, 2024 12:32:37 GMT
Pete Whitehead I'd be interested to see how you'd redraw the GLA constituencies. I'm sure I'm not the only one. 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
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Post by johnloony on May 5, 2024 12:32:57 GMT
Pete Whitehead I'd be interested to see how you'd redraw the GLA constituencies. I'm sure I'm not the only one. He already did it
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Post by evergreenadam on May 5, 2024 13:00:32 GMT
Is there any mechanism for boundary changes to the constituencies, or are they cast in stone? Presumably they have to be composed of entire boroughs, in which case I suppose there's very little scope for change anyway. The LGBCE has for some time been considering how best to deal with the electoral inequality that has arisen between constituency assembly seats since the GLA was first created in 2000. They don’t seem to have made much progress, that may be because they don’t consider that they have the legal power to make the changes that they consider necessary to establish an acceptable level of electoral equality and therefore need the SoS to grant them that power before undertaking the review. In which case we will have to wait until there is a Labour government as it certainly is not a priority of the current government. The details are on the LGBCE Committee agenda pages but I don’t have time to search through the meeting minutes to find out when it was last discussed.
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Post by evergreenadam on May 5, 2024 13:10:01 GMT
Such a shame, maybe PR will be reintroduced by a Labour govt and the spreadsheet will be back for next time. Ward level data (without random postal votes from across the local authority area being added in) should be available for all elections. The availabilityness of ward-level voting numbers is not dependent on, and is a separate issue from, the proportionality of the electoral system being used. Regardless of whether the election is done by FPTP or SV or AV or PR lists or STV or whatever, producing ward-level data would be an organisational thing which would require postal votes to be kept in separate ward subtotals without being mixed up. 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.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on May 5, 2024 13:24:14 GMT
In the GLA spreadsheets 2004-21 the Postal Vote totals were given as an aggregate for each borough.
It's Hounslow who chose to add the postal votes to random wards when giving ward results of Parliamentary elections.
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Post by timrollpickering on May 5, 2024 13:28:11 GMT
I suppose major electorate changes between boroughs might require a rejigging, though not much sign of that recently I think. I think City & East may be getting oversized. Given the average GLA constituency contains 5.36 parliamentary seats and there's 5 alone in Newham and Tower Hamlets now It now has a local electorate of over 510,000
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Post by batman on May 5, 2024 20:42:24 GMT
Pete Whitehead I'd be interested to see how you'd redraw the GLA constituencies. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I hope some day that you'll join us, and the world will live as one
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on May 5, 2024 20:44:11 GMT
Imagine there's no boroughs, it's easy if you try.
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OWL
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Post by OWL on May 5, 2024 21:07:30 GMT
The availabilityness of ward-level voting numbers is not dependent on, and is a separate issue from, the proportionality of the electoral system being used. Regardless of whether the election is done by FPTP or SV or AV or PR lists or STV or whatever, producing ward-level data would be an organisational thing which would require postal votes to be kept in separate ward subtotals without being mixed up. 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?
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on May 5, 2024 21:17:05 GMT
Counting at the polling stations and collating the total result later is how almost everyone else counts elections. The UK is very unusual in having the formal and final legal declaration of the result done at a central count within hours of the votes being cast.
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on May 5, 2024 21:25:05 GMT
I'd be in favour of releasing ward-by-ward breakdowns for higher-tier elections a few months after the fact (when only saddos like us would notice) but perhaps wouldn't go as far as to advocate publishing that information polling station by polling station.
Overnight counts with all candidates stood on a podium in rosettes are a fine British tradition, and if anything we should try to force it on other democracies - logistics be damned!
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Post by gwynthegriff on May 5, 2024 22:12:24 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? Given the lack of knowledge of correct practice all too often at centralised counts God knows what might go on at polling stations!
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on May 5, 2024 23:55:49 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? 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.
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