Electoral map sparks quibbles, concerns and questions
Memorial University political science professor Russell Williams sees hints of political games being played with the province’s proposed 40-seat electoral map.
The newly proposed district of Pippy Park includes chunks of traditionally NDP territory along with a lot of new subdivisions, which favour the Tories. All things being equal, that’s fertile ground for a Progressive Conservative candidate, Williams said.
“We don’t know what’s gone on in terms of the backroom partisan process that’s used to create this map. We don’t know what kind of horse trading occurred,” Williams said in an interview with The Telegram “It’s party appointees sitting behind closed doors doing this.”
The proposed new electoral map was released last Friday, and on first blush, the big story was rural Newfoundland losing seven seats in the legislature.
With a few days to digest the maps, though, it’s the fiddly little details of where the lines are drawn, and the real political implications of those boundaries, that’s starting to spark conversation.
On the Burin Peninsula, Marystown Mayor Sam Synard organized a public meeting for tonight to discuss the fact that the new proposed electoral boundary runs right through the town.
“This would be the first time, I guess ever, that Marystown would be split into two provincial districts,” Synard said. “Like any town, we’d like to maintain our sense of community, even vis a vis political constituencies.”
Synard said the best bet is to move the boundary line a little ways up the peninsula, so that all of Marystown will be in one district.
In Corner Brook, on the other hand, Mayor Charles Pender is upset that the city is no longer split in two. Pender said Corner Brook was the dominant voice in two different districts, but the new lines will result in one district for the city, and two other districts for the surrounding areas.
“Corner Brook will be the loser in this proposed arrangement,” he said. “We often find ourselves in conflict with the interests of the towns and communities around us.”
The boundaries are also forcing potential candidates to make tough choices.
Jeff Marshall, who was nominated as the Liberal candidate in Kilbride, had to make some hard decisions, since Kilbride no longer exists as an electoral district.
Marshall says he’ll now run in Ferryland, and go back to Square 1.
“There will be another nomination called, because (Liberal Leader Dwight Ball) has been very clear that there’s going to be open, transparent nominations. That’ll continue the same as it did before,” Marshall said. “I just have to roll with it and run in the district that’s there.”
In terms of the big picture, Williams said the electoral map might not stand up if somebody challenges it in court.
Two districts on the south coast and all four Labrador districts are dramatically below the average population of an electoral district.
“There’s sort of this rule of thumb that people talk about that 25 per cent is the maximum unless there’s some sort of really extenuating circumstance,” Williams said. “I can look at this map already and I can see four constituencies that probably don’t have extenuating circumstances, but are outside the variation.”
In a Canadian context, the province’s electoral districts aren’t even that big. The district of Peace River in Alberta is bigger than Cartwright-L’anse au Clair and Torngat Mountains put together. In fact, that district is more than six times larger in area than Burgeo-La Poile and Fortune Bay-Cape la Hune, two of the biggest districts on the island geographically.
Williams says having some districts dramatically smaller than others makes the new electoral map ripe for a legal challenge.
“In general, the courts don’t want to get involved, so betting on this being able to survive a court challenge is a fairly safe bet,” he said. “(But) if the court was looking to set the precedent that the principle of voter equality is the core guiding principle — that these variations are too big — this is a map they might want to take some time to look at and make some precedent.”
“We don’t know what’s gone on in terms of the backroom partisan process that’s used to create this map. We don’t know what kind of horse trading occurred. It’s party appointees sitting behind closed doors doing this.” Russell Williams Political science professor, MUN