Designation of a Boundary Authority

Countries that delimit electoral districts must designate a boundary authority and establish some machinery for carrying out the task of redistricting. The task assigned to the boundary authority is the same in all countries: divide the country into districts for the election of representatives.

The composition of the boundary authority and the degree of independence from the legislature or partisan concerns granted to this authority, however, vary considerably from country to country. Some countries allow legislators to draw their own districts. Other countries, in an attempt to remove "politics" from the process, assign the task of redistricting to an independent boundary commission. In some countries, redistricting is centralised under a single redistricting authority while in other countries, states or provinces draw their own districts, with or without a uniform set of rules. In many countries, the boundary authority is granted the power to choose the final districting plan. But in some countries with non-legislative boundary authorities, the legislature or the government must approve the final districting plan before it can be implemented.

The types of boundary authorities countries have established and the degree of independence countries have accorded these authorities cover a broad spectrum. At one end of the spectrum is the United States, where the redistricting process is very political and decentralised. The responsibility for drawing districts for the United States Congress rests individually with the fifty states. There are few limitations on the states, and the boundary authorities are almost always political entities, i.e., state legislatures.

At the other end of the spectrum are many of the Commonwealth countries, where politicians have opted out of the redistricting process and granted the authority to redistrict to neutral or independent commissions. A central agency may draw districts for the entire country. If the central agency does not actually draw the districts, it establishes guidelines for regional commissions and oversees the redistribution process. The final decision as to which district boundaries should be implemented often rests with the commission and not with the legislature.

This section will examine alternative approaches to the designation of a boundary authority. It will discuss the composition of the boundary authority, whether the authority should be partisan or non-partisan, and whether a central authority or regional authorities should perform the task of redistricting. Who has the authority to make the final decision as to which set of district boundaries are to be implemented will also be considered.

Composition of the Boundary Authority

A substantial majority of the countries that delimit electoral districts employ a specially designated boundary commission or an election management body to draw these boundaries. The legislature serves as the boundary authority in several countries. And in a few countries, government agencies are charged with the task of redistricting.

Britain was an early pioneer of establishing an independent boundary commission to define electoral districts[1].  Many established democracies once governed by the United Kingdom followed this example and adopted boundary (or delimitation) commissions, including Australia and Canada, Caribbean countries such as the Bahamas, Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines and several Anglophone African countries (i.e., Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe) also adopted boundary commissions for delimiting constituencies.

Composition of Boundary Commissions

Boundary commissions tend to be relatively small in size, ranging from three to seven or nine members. Canada, for example, has three-member commissions, the United Kingdom has four-member commissions, and a number of Caribbean countries have five-member commissions (e.g., Bahamas, Barbados). New Zealand and Germany each have seven-member commissions; Albania has a nine-member commission.

The commissions often include non-partisan (non-political) public officials with backgrounds in election administration, geography, and statistics. In Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, for example, the commissions incorporate electoral officers or registrar-generals, as well as the Director of Ordnance Survey (United Kingdom) and the Surveyor-General (Australia and New Zealand). Statisticians have an important role on Australian commissions because population projections are used to draw electoral district boundaries. In Canada, academics knowledgeable about elections and/or geography may be asked to serve on boundary commissions.

Members of the judiciary are also well represented on districting commissions in many countries. They often chair the commissions, as in Canada and New Zealand. In the United Kingdom, senior judges serve as Deputy Chairs of the four Boundary Commissions in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. In India, two of the three members of the Delimitation Commission are required to be judges.

Many countries with boundary commissions exclude anyone with political connections from serving on the commission. On the other hand, some countries specifically include representatives of the major political parties on the commission. For example, in New Zealand, two “political” appointees, one representing the governing party and one the opposition parties, serve on the seven-member Representation Commission. The theory behind their presence on the commission is that it helps ensure that any political bias in a proposed delimitation plan is recognized and rectified. However, because the two political appointees constitute a minority of the commission, they cannot outvote the non-political commissioners. Other countries that incorporate political party representatives on the boundary commission include Albania, Bahamas, Barbados, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and St. Vincent.

Botswana is one of the countries that specifically excludes any person with political connections from serving on the boundary commission. Other examples include Australia, Canada, India, and Mauritius.

Election Management Bodies

Another, equally common, approach to delimiting constituencies is the use of the election commission. In some countries, the election commission is quite independent of the executive and the legislature (Lithuania, Mexico, and Poland, for example), but in other countries this is less true (e.g., Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania).

Legislature

Although many countries have delegated the task of delimitation to an authority other than the obviously self-interested legislature, in some countries the legislature has retained this responsibility.

However, a number of countries in which the legislature is responsible for delimitation are countries with List Proportional Representation (List PR) electoral systems. The legislatures in these countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden) originally defined a set of electoral district boundaries (often multimember districts) in the constitution or electoral law, and these constituencies have remained in place for subsequent elections – although the number of seats assigned to the multimember constituencies vary over time depending on the population size.

A second set of countries in which the legislature plays a role in the delimitation process are countries with mixed electoral systems like Italy, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, and Panama. The boundaries of the constituencies in these countries are of less political consequence than in those with a First Past the Post electoral system because a separate set of legislative seats are filled via proportional representation. Elections in mixed systems usually produce outcomes that are far more proportional than FPTP systems.

The United States is one of the very few democracies that allows the legislature a dominant role in the delimitation process given that the election of legislators is based solely on single-member constituencies. The consequence of this approach, at least in the United States, is that partisan politics plays a very large role – and often quite explicit role – in the redistricting process. For example, on several occasions when a redistricting plan was challenged in court on the grounds that the plan constituted a racial gerrymandering, defendants claimed that politics, and not race, was the motivating factor behind the plan hence the plan was neither illegal nor unconstitutional.

Notes:

[1] New Zealand established an independent boundary commission in 1887 that included government-appointed members; however, the government-appointed members never exceeded the number of politically neutral public servants included on the commission.

Partisan Considerations in Choosing a Boundary Authority

Since different electoral district configurations produce different election outcomes, even if voting patterns remain constant, the designation of a boundary authority and the powers granted to that authority are very important.

In the nineteenth century, districts almost everywhere were drawn by the legislatures. Legislators from the majority political party were often tempted to draw districting plans that favoured their own candidates at the expense of the candidates from other parties. The redistricting, process came under increasing attack for political bias because of this practice.

Over the past fifty years, a growing number of countries have moved to neutral or non-partisan commissions to avoid politically biased redistricting. In 1964, when Canada adopted independent electoral boundary commissions for redistricting, the United States was left as one of the few long-standing liberal democracies where the redistricting process remains in the hands of the politicians. The United States has also been one of the only countries to accept partisanship as an inevitable part of the redistricting process.

Disagreeing with the proposition that politics cannot be removed from the redistricting process, many countries have established neutral commissions and enacted rules for drawing district boundaries. These commissions have no formal links to political parties, and commissioners are not permitted to consider political data when drawing district boundaries. Instead, commissioners are obliged to consider criteria such as equal population and respect for administrative boundaries in deciding upon district configurations. Since the adoption of these reforms, few have questioned the neutrality of the redistricting process in these countries.

The only drawback to the non-partisan approach to redistricting is that it does not necessarily produce a politically unbiased redistricting plan: Ignoring politics does not mean that a districting plan has no political effect. The non-partisan approach guarantees only that any political bias in a districting plan is unintentional.

Solutions for Political Bias in Redistricting

Some countries have attempted to devise solutions to the problem of political bias in redistricting outcomes. One solution, for example, is to allow representatives of all the major political parties to serve on the body that makes redistricting decisions. Another solution is to permit representatives of major political parties to analyse the potential partisan impact of a districting plan before the plan is enacted and comment on the plans. In the United States, one or both of these approaches have been adopted by most of the states.

In the United States, a legislative committee or a bipartisan commission may draw a districting plan. Political data to ascertain the potential partisan effect of a plan will almost certainly be employed. Because a districting plan is almost always enacted by the state legislature, the likely result, however, is a plan that knowingly favours one political party or the incumbent legislators of both parties rather than a politically unbiased plan.

New Zealand has adopted another approach to the problem of politically biased outcomes: Two of the seven members of the New Zealand Representation Commission are political appointees. One of these two partisan members represents the governing party, the other one represents the opposition parties. Their presence on the commission helps to ensure that any egregious political bias is recognised and rectified. Because the two political appointees constitute a minority on the commission, they cannot outvote the non-political commissioners. The neutrality of the commission is, therefore, unquestioned.

Degrees of Boundary Authority Centralisation

Countries vary in the degree to which the delimitation process is centralised. At one end of the spectrum, the delimitation, or redistricting, process is very decentralised, with regional entities such as states or provinces responsible for drawing their own federal electoral districts. Little, if any, federal guidance is provided to these regional entities. At the other end of the spectrum are those countries in which a single central agency is charged with drawing districts for the entire country. In the middle of the spectrum are countries that have established central agencies, but these agencies do not actually draw federal electoral districts. Instead, they may establish guidelines for regional commissions to follow when drawing district boundaries, and they may oversee the federal redistricting process.

The United States is at one end of the spectrum. There the redistricting process is completely decentralised. Once the U.S. Congress apportions congressional seats among the states, each of the fifty states is responsible for drawing the allotted number of congressional districts within its own borders. Each state adopts its own redistricting procedures and determines its own redistricting criteria. There is some guidance from the federal government and the courts, however, but this guidance is limited for the most part to the areas of population equality and minority voting rights.

Australia and Canada, despite employing federal systems like the United States, have adopted redistricting procedures that are more centralised. In Australia, separate commissions for the redistribution of federal electoral districts were established in each state at the turn of the century. Canada borrowed this practice in 1964 when it determined that federal redistribution should be conducted by independent commissions established in each province. However, both Canada and Australia provide the state or provincial commissions charged with creating federal electoral districts with a uniform set of criteria for redistribution. Both countries also provide some degree of central co-ordination for federal redistribution.

Elections Canada, a permanent federal agency, co-ordinates the process of federal redistribution in Canada by bringing commission chairpersons together for discussions before the process begins. Elections Canada also provides each provincial commission with a database for federal redistricting and trained support staff.

In Australia, the federal electoral commissioner--the administrative head and one of the three members of the Australian Electoral Commission--has a seat on each of the state redistribution commissions charged with federal redistricting. The other two members of the Australian Electoral Commission are added to form augmented redistribution commissions for federal redistributions within each state.

In most other countries, redistricting is centralised in a single federal agency that draws districts for the entire country. In Germany, a permanent seven-member constituency committee determines the district boundaries for the entire country (although each state has a voice in the process). In New Zealand, the seven-member Representation Commission undertakes redistribution for the entire country. In France, the Ministry of Interior drew district lines for the entire country when single-member districts were restored in 1986. And in India, when redistribution last occurred in 1973, a delimitation commission conducted the process administratively for the entire country.

Conclusion

A major advantage of a centralised redistricting process is that the redistricting criteria can be interpreted or applied without regional variation and, as a result, districts may be more uniform in construction. A major advantage of a decentralised process is that district boundaries are drawn by individuals more familiar with regional geography, communities of interest and other local circumstances.

Authority for Choosing the Final Districting Plan

In the nineteenth century, in nearly every country that delimited districts, legislative approval was required before a redistricting plan could be implemented. Recent reforms designed to remove politics from the redistricting process have reduced the power of legislatures to approve redistricting plans. In many countries today, the legislature plays only a limited role or no role at all in the redistricting process. However, some countries do require executive approval, rather than legislative approval, before a redistricting plan can be implemented. While this removes the decision from legislators--those who directly benefit from the districting plan--it still leaves the redistricting process open to charges of political influence.

In the majority of countries that assign election management bodies the task of delimiting constituencies, the election commission serves as the final authority; the approval of the legislature or executive is not required to implement the delimitation plan. This is less true of boundary commissions – more often than not, a constituency plan proposed by a boundary commission must be enacted by the legislature (or signed by the executive) before it can be implemented. However, in New Zealand, for example, the final plan of the Representation Committee, once published, cannot be changed or appealed. Since 1983, Australia’s augmented Electoral Commission has had the same power. The constituency boundaries created by the Delimitation Commission in India are also final.

In other countries, the legislature can debate and, possibly, even delay the enactment of a commission's plan, but it cannot modify the plan. In Canada, for instance, the 1964 Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act removed the responsibility for redistricting from the Parliament and gave it to independent electoral commissions in each province. Parliament is permitted to consider plans produced by the commissions but has no vote on their implementation. Parliament used this provision to delay the implementation of plans, however, prompting a change in the law--there is now a sixty day limit on Parliamentary debate and consideration.

In the United Kingdom, the final proposals of the four Boundary Commissions take effect only after an affirmative vote by Parliament. But Parliament's power to accept or reject a plan is a formality. It has almost always affirmed commission proposals; to do otherwise would be viewed as "political." The only two exceptions were in 1948, when Parliament proposed the addition of seventeen seats for under-represented urban areas, and in 1969, when Parliament delayed the implementation of a redistribution plan on the grounds that impending changes to local government boundaries would render the plan obsolete. Conservatives viewed both of these actions by the Labour government as political.

Some countries have provisions requiring the legislature to either accept or reject the proposed delimitation plan, but specifically do not grant parliament the authority to modify the plan. Examples of this approach include Malaysia, Mauritius, and Papua New Guinea.

The United States is the anomaly with regard to legislatures and the adoption of redistricting plans. Most states assign the task of federal redistricting to the state legislature. The few that assign the task to an agency or a commission still require an affirmative vote of the state legislature to enact a redistricting plan.

Conclusion

Allowing the legislature to accept or reject a plan--let alone create it--opens the redistricting process up to charges of political bias. In fact, many plans adopted by legislatures do favour one political party over others. Still, plans drawn by neutral commissions can also produce politically biased election outcomes, however unintentional.