Friday, December 12, 2003

The Court Case That Could Reshape US Democracy: Its nearly 200 years now since Massachusetts Governor Ellbridge Gerry put the term 'Gerry-mander' into the vocabulary, and this particular form of democratic corruption is as blatant as ever. In a system of single-member electorates a result which is effectively a gerrymander is the rule rather than the exception. One of the many benefits of the multi-member electorate, quota-preferential proportional representation method of electing representative bodies is that it effectively terminates the possibility of the Gerrymander. Give us another 200 or so years, if democracy can survive at all that long...

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