Ireland really has had issues with gerrymandering.  Really really.  I think the Grofman volume on "Electoral Systems Around the World" has a chapter on Ireland that discusses this at least a bit.  As with American gerrymanders, the proponents have had mixed success.

PR systems can also be malapportioned greatly.  For example, Spain guarantees its smallest provinces at least 3 members to the disadvantage of populous provinces like Madrid and Barcelona.  The Basque government guarantees each province equal numbers of seats in the regional legislature despite far from equal populations.  Catalonia similarly gives the rural provinces overrrepresentation in the Generalitat (regional parliament).  Indeed, in a previous regional elections, the nationalist CiU was able to retain power over the Catalan Socialists due to this malapportionment.

Seat magnitude is also a major potential subject of manipulation in PR systems (I think this was part of the issue in Ireland).  Small seat numbers tend to limit the proportionality of a PR system.  Spain has many provinces with only 3 or 4 seats.  The two major parties almost invariably win all of the seats.  In a three seat district, the party with the largest number of votes usually gets two seats and the second place party one seat.  I believe that this outcome will occur unless: (1) a third-party gets votes equal to 50% of those received by the first-place party (in which case three parties each get one seat), OR (2) the second place party fails to get votes equal to 1/3 of those received by the first-place party (in which case the first-place party gets all the seats).  This is one reason why Spain has a strong tendency towards two major parties (the PP and PSOE) despite using the D'Hondt system to allocate seats.

David Lublin

Dan Johnson-Weinberger wrote:

A simple switch to PR won't prevent gerrymandering.  Ask the folks in
Ireland.

Mark E. Rush

That's intriguing, because it's counter-intuitive. The fuel of gerrymandering in the U.S. is the lack of representation for the political minority in a single-member district. That's pretty clear from the Vieth oral argument (thanks Marty for the link), and I thought commonly-accepted among students of redistricting.

Multi-member districts with proportional voting make it far more difficult to effectively gerrymander, because the political minority still gets elected. That, I thought, was also a commonly-accepted understanding.

Northern Ireland certainly sufferers from anti-Catholic gerrymandering (or at least has suffered in the past according to Catholic advocates), but Northern Ireland uses single-member districts.

Does the Republic of Ireland, which uses three-member to five-member districts, really suffer from gerrymandering as well?

Happy New Year,
Dan

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