New Zealand: The Mathmatics of Electoral District Allocation in New Zealand

This paper outlines the implicit conceptual basis of New Zealand’s electoral district allocation, as embodied in the Electoral Act 1993. We describe how these concepts are implemented in the Government Statistician’s electoral calculations with examples from the 1997 calculations, and put the words of the Act into simple mathematical formulae. We show, using some more complex mathematics, how the Mäori Option affects the number of Mäori electoral districts, and describe an unexpected effect of the Option on the number of General electoral districts.

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