Redistricting: What the United States Can Learn from Canada

Abstract

be said to describe how district boundaries are readjusted in Canada. Why the difference between the two countries—countries that in many other ways (including their continued adherence to plurality voting) share much in common on the electoral machinery front? The answer is complex and multi-layered. It warrants a full-blown comparative analysis, something that the length of this paper does not permit. Fortunately the American side of the equation has been amply covered in works ranging from the magisterial study of redistricting by Robert Dixon, through numerous books and articles by Bernard Grofman and colleagues, to recent studies by David Lublin, Mark Rush, and David Canon (Canon, 1999; Dixon, 1968; Grofman, Lijphart, McKay and Scarrow, 1982; Grofman, Handley, and Niemi, 1992; Lublin, 1997; Rush, 1998; and Rush and Engstrom, 2001). I take comfort in the vast American literature on electoral districting. It frees me from the responsibility of constructing a truly comparative framework for my analysis and enables me to devote the remainder of this paper to an examination of redistricting in Canada. I propose to consider three questions. First, what has Canada done to reform its process of readjusting electoral boundaries? Second, why did it do it? Third, how has it worked out? The answers to those questions may help to provide guidance to Americans seeking alternatives to the labyrinth that currently marks redistricting in the United States. But first, a semantic note. In a federal country such as Canada or the United States electoral districts in the national Parliament or