Jun

23

Representation by population

Filed Under Social Studies 

Every Social Studies teacher knows that the US (and Canada and a whole lot of other places) profess to have representation by population. That means that, at least in theory, all the electoral districts have about the same number of represenatives for about the same population so that a vote in one riding or district is just as valuable as a vote in another.

In practice it’s often a little bit different. A few years ago when I worked for Elections Canada during a federal election, we sent out close to (if I remember right) 96,000 voter registration cards for that riding. To contrast with that riding, one of the biggest, Nunavut, one of the smallest, had about 12,000 eligible voters.

So how do you deal with disparities like that? Well, the online Redistricting Game helps you understand why ridings and districts end up the way they do, sometimes incredibly irregularly shaped. It also helps you understand some of the political forces that go into the decision and further contort what should be a relatively simple process of reorganizing ridings.

This is a fairly simple and interactive explanation of a complex process, and the designers of this game have done a really good job. For Social Studies and Civics teachers this game is a must.

Comments

One Response to “Representation by population”

  1. DoctorJ on June 23rd, 2007 4:51 pm

    I’ve spent far too much time playing this and I can vouch for it: it’s really well done. As someone who teaches university level courses on elections, I can also vouch for its accuracy as well.

    AS for the disparities you’re noting between Nunavut and the district in which you were working, bear in mind that there’s a difference between the division of seats between provinces and the drawing of districts within provinces. The US has strict rules on intrastate equality, but also tolerates significant deviations from equality at the interstate level. In Canada, we’re less strict on population deviations within a province than the US.

    Nevertheless, the redistricting game still has something to teach Canadians about the process.

Leave a Reply