1.1 Electoral Districts
What is a district?
Elections are a process for translating the preferences of a group into some type of collective choice. For many political communities, voting is a natural, emergent process of making collective decisions. When attempting to study elections, it is essential to define the scope: where is the election happening? Generally, there is a jurisdictional boundary within which the election is taking place. This might be a civic division, such as a city ward, or it may be a country-wide election to elect a new leader. The geographic location where the election takes place is known as the electoral district.
Some elections are conducted to fill seats in a governing body, such as a parliament, congress, council, or board. These elections might be national, sub-national, or local elections.
- National Election – electing representatives for a parliament, congress, or national assembly.
- Sub-national Elections– electing representatives for a regional governing body, such as states or provinces.
- Local Elections – electing representatives for a local governing body, such as a city, town, or county.
Links to a Legislature
The seats in legislative bodies often correspond to a specific geographic area. For example, in local elections, a city or municipality may be organized into a series of wards that correspond to specific neighbourhoods or boroughs. The city council would be composed of representatives from each ward. Additionally, Parliamentary systems in the Westminster tradition (such as the UK, Canada, and Australia) are organized around the importance of maintaining a direct link between local residents, called constituents, and their national government. Often, the seats in a legislature are distributed in accordance with population. This is known as representation by population. Densely populated urban centres will be allocated more representatives in the legislature than sparsely populated areas. In order to facilitate this representation, the area is subdivided into discrete electoral districts.
