The constituency is, without any doubt, one of the essential elements of the electoral system and as such, it will be dealt with in depth in another section of this work (see Boundary Delimitation).
In terms of the legal structure of electoral processes, the central aspect that must be analysed are the effects of any of the possible ways of dividing the national territory in the fulfilment of the universal constitutional principle that demands an equal value to each vote, the principle of 'one person, one vote'.
This principle allows the vote of each citizen to exert an equal influence on the forming of representation, regardless of the constituency in which they assert their right to vote. As a consequence, if it is a multinominal system, a number of seats must be assigned to each constituency in proportion
to its population; if the system is uninominal, constituencies must be designed in such a way that they have the same number of voters.
This problem is common to proportional and majority systems. However, in the first case, it is easier to solve, as it is simply a question of adding new seats to districts that are under-represented, if this is constitutionally possible. On the contrary, if uninominal districts are used, any modification of one constituency affects others, inasmuch as it implies a redesign that affects at least those closest to it.
Consequently we will analyse the way this problem is dealt with in different countries that use a uninominal majority system, realizing that the demand for equal voting rights has undergone a different evolution in its practical application in different countries.
In the first place, one must refer to the United States as an example of radical interpretation of the precept. The principle is established in Article 1, Section 2, of the United States Constitution: 'Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states...according to their respective numbers.'
In Wesberry vs. Sanders (1964), the United States Supreme Court interpreted this article in the sense that the principle of proportionality should be practised as strictly as possible. From this emerged the standard 'as nearly as practicable', applied afterwards in, among others, Kikpatric vs. Preisler (1969) to demand that the states put good faith into practice to achieve the mathematical equality of the value of the vote in the determination of the constituencies existing in each state. Unequal values are only accepted if these have emerged in spite of the decisive actions of the state authorities to eliminate them.
This system is complemented in the United States with a new census every year ending in 0, which was considered an added requirement for the application of the principle by the Supreme Court in Reynolds vs. Simms in 1964. In so doing, and on the grounds of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, the periodic review of the census was constitutionalised, with the objective of avoiding inequalities arising in the assertion of the right to vote as a consequence of population movements.
In short, in the American system the principle of individual representation is absolutely dominant over values of collective representation, territorial or any other type of interest, to such a clear degree as is probably only possible in a relatively recent and very homogeneous society, in spite of its diversity. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 categorically emphasises the principle by asserting that it must prevail over any existing ethnic or
racial division in a city, county or state.
A much less strict interpretation of the principle, insofar as it is amended or played down by others that are considered equally worthy of protection, is applied in Great Britain. The four existing Boundary Commissions (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), have to go by the criteria established in the Statutory Rules, such as the existence of a guiding total number,
the attribution of a minimum number for Scotland and Wales and the need to observe the limits of the counties and boroughs of London. All of these have to be compatible with the principle that the electorate in each constituency must be as close to the electoral quota as the application of the rest of the criteria will permit.
The idea underlying this compatibility of criteria is to avoid the creation of artificial communities whose only purpose is electoral. It is true that there is a certain inconsistency in organising political representation on artificial bases in the name of strict equality of voting rights. The very idea of
making individual representation compatible with the representation of groups as forming elements of political representation has an unmistakably democratic basis. However, reality shows that the differences are considerable and that legal initiatives to place a ceiling on inequality have failed. For example, during studies carried out in 1947 that lead to the setting of general boundaries, the commission proposed that the maximum variation be 25 percent, which was rejected by the Labour Government at the time. There is no doubt that in this regard the British system is the result of a very slow historical evolution, in which the Rotten Boroughs and the traditional territorial basis of their nobility have not yet been fully overcome.
Precisely because of this, a further problem emerges in Great Britain that tends to aggravate the situation considerably--the excessively long period that elapses between each general redistribution. Thus, since 1885, an overall reassigning of seats throughout the whole country has only occurred in 1918, 1947, 1969, 1983 and 1995.
This same issue, worsened by population movements, has emerged in Mexico. As a result of not revising the electoral map for the appointment of 300 deputies that have to be distributed among the thirty-two States since 1978 (with a minimum of two per state), constituencies have been encountered that show inequalities of one to twenty in the number of inhabitants per constituency.
Brief reference also should be made to Canada where many of the provincial boundary commissions have made relatively important corrections in terms of the principle in order to grant admission to the collective rights of groups of representation that have been identified, generically denominated as 'communities of interest'.
The legal basis of this positive discrimination action in favour of specific communities is found in the Act on Revision of the Limits of Constituencies. Article 15 establishes that the division of each province will be made in such a way that the population of each one of them corresponds, as far as possible, to the quotient of the population and that as a rule the difference cannot surpass 25 percent. But it permits the provinces to observe these circumstances on the grounds of territory, to avoid excessively large
constituencies in the north, surface-wise, or because of the existence of
'communities of interest.' This generic concept can be of territorial origin (for example, to avoid the division of certain municipalities or regions for purely electoral purposes), but also because of the existence of groups of citizens differentiated on ethnic, racial, religious, cultural or other grounds that are considered relevant when it comes to the division into constituencies and the consideration of which determines inequality in the value of the vote of the rest.
