Perhaps we should distinguish two reasons for drawing electoral districts
whose boundary isn't an unbroken line across land ... (1) "necessity" and
(2) ":convenience".
I. The first ground, "necessity", arises when some enclave of the
state's [= nation-state's/ federation member state's] territory is
separated from the rest by (a) water or (b) foreign territory -- Alaska/
Tasmania and (former) East Berlin, respectively -- or, I suppose, in
future, (c) by the void of space, if colonies are established on the Moon,
Mars, space stations etc. (Hey, don't laugh -- did Madison or Congressmen
Bingham imagine their constitutional drafting would one day be applied to
voting machines? (-;) Of course it wouldn't apply if the enclave warrants
enough seats to form a separate electoral district in its own right --
either because its population is large enough (Tasmanian, Northern Ireland
in the House of Commons), and/or because it is constitutionally guaranteed
a minimum number of seats (Alaska, Tasmania).
I suppose this isn't "absolute necessity" since, in the extreme, one could
always merge such an enclave with the nearest electorate in the
"metropolitan" heartland of the state. The representative(s) elected would
simply have to have their suitcases packed and/or passports ready, to
service constituents. Eg, Australia's smaller island territories are merged
into House of Reps electoral districts for the nearest State -- Lord Howe
Island (and possibly Norfolk Island, though I'm not sure about it) with New
South Wales and Cocos/ Keeling and Christmas Island with Western Australia
respectively. But they're tiny in population.
In this case you could still maintain the legal fiction that every
electoral district is "contiguous" -- its boundary is still a single
unbroken line, even though that boundary also encompasses sea and/or
foreign soil. Every part of the state's own territory that lies within that
defined area is part of the same district.
II. The New Brunswick proposal that Colin Feasby mentioned --
consolidating all the aboriginal reserves in the province into one district
-- is a case of genuine legal non-contiguity, and would therefore need to
be justified as "convenient" rather than "necessary". Without being so
impertinent as to tell the Canadians what to do with their own elections, I
will comment that this seems an imaginative and workable proposal for
ensuring minority representation without either (a) classifying individual
voters/ candidates by race/ caste (as in India, Lebanon, Bosnia, New
Zealand, etc), or (b) drawing contiguous but extremely non-compact
districts to achieve "minority majorities", even at the cost of (eg) having
districts run down a single highway.
Whatever the arguments for and against affirmative action/ special measures
for other ethnic groups, particularly immigrants, the case of Indigenous
"First Nations" is distinguishable. The criterion for distinct voting
Indigenous rights here is more like citizenship/ nationality (albeit in a
"domestic dependent" nation) than it is like race/ ethnicity in the "drop
of blood" sense. I can't vote in an irish Dail election because I'm not a
citizen of the Republic of Ireland -- even though my
great-great-grandfather was born there (and even though present-day Irish
citizenship correlates closely with past Irish ancestry). The "Lockean"
moral case for preserving a kind of quasi-federal, quasi-protectorate
status for Indigenous communities is heightened when they have been
incorporated into the colonial state without them or their ancestors ever
giving consent.
But that goes raises issues beyond the scope of electoral law. My basic
point is, some "de facto" non-contiguity may unavoidable (even if masked as
"de jure" contiguity) as long as "equal voters/ population per
representative" and the size of the legislature are non-negotiable. Other,
"de jure" non-contiguous districting is discretionary, but that isn't to
say it couldn't be justified.
At 12:04 25-09-2002 -0400, Mark Rush wrote:
have a look at the cases on the VA division of legislative services
link--especially WEST v. GILMORE. They deal with the necessity of
drawing noncontiguous districts across the chesapeake bay
http://dlsgis.state.va.us/ref/redistcases.htm
cheers
Mark E. Rush
Professor of Politics
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450
http://home.wlu.edu/~rushm
(540) 463-8904
(540) 463-8639 (fax)
>>> Jennifer Steen <jennifer.steen@bc.edu> 09/25/02 10:24AM >>>
Greetings all --
Does anyone know of any articles (or books or web sites or whatever)
that discuss the idea of *non*-contiguous electoral districts?
Thanks,
Jennifer Steen
--
Jennifer A. Steen
Assistant Professor
Political Science Department
Boston College
e-mail: jennifer.steen@bc.edu
web: www2.bc.edu/~steenje