Gerrymandering

Aliantha · 04-27-2016, 12:53 AM

OK, here's an example of gerrymandering which was successful here in Australia, but particularly in my state of Qld.

The party at the time who happened to be conservatives, divided the state up into equal sized portions for the electorates, so basically, every electorate was the same size. Whilst this might seem fair, it actually was heavily tipped in favour of the conservative land owners at the time. Some of the electorates only had 6 people living in them thanks to them basically covering a whole cattle station. So in effect, there were a whole heap of electorates which only needed to benefit one person who would represent their families direct best personal interests in the parliament. Naturally these farmers weren't required to even show up in parliament, they just gave their proxy to the party. They actually didn't even have to be a party representative. They could run as an independent, get voted in by their wife, then just give their preference to the conservatives.

It was a dark period. Only about 40 years ago.

04-27-2016, 12:53 AM	#10
Aliantha trying hard to be a better person Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Brisbane, Australia Posts: 16,493	OK, here's an example of gerrymandering which was successful here in Australia, but particularly in my state of Qld. The party at the time who happened to be conservatives, divided the state up into equal sized portions for the electorates, so basically, every electorate was the same size. Whilst this might seem fair, it actually was heavily tipped in favour of the conservative land owners at the time. Some of the electorates only had 6 people living in them thanks to them basically covering a whole cattle station. So in effect, there were a whole heap of electorates which only needed to benefit one person who would represent their families direct best personal interests in the parliament. Naturally these farmers weren't required to even show up in parliament, they just gave their proxy to the party. They actually didn't even have to be a party representative. They could run as an independent, get voted in by their wife, then just give their preference to the conservatives. It was a dark period. Only about 40 years ago. __________________ Kind words are the music of the world. F. W. Faber

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