POLS 1400 Chapter 13-15: Issues in Canadian Politics: Chapters: 13, 14, 15 Summary Notes

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 1400
• Professor: Nanita Mohan

Document Summary

It is important that elections are to be conducted in the most free and fair ways as possible. Every province and territory should be fairly represented in the house of commons. Primary function of elections is to allow the mass of citizens to choose their parliamentary representatives and, indirectly, their governmental leaders. Elections are used to inform the public. Electoral process begins by dividing the country into single-member electoral districts. This redistribution involves two stages; deciding how many seats in the commons to allot to each province/territory and actually drawing constituency boundaries within the provinces. The three territories are each given one seat automatically, while the population of each pro(cid:448)i(cid:374)(cid:272)e is di(cid:448)ided (cid:271)(cid:455) the (cid:858)electoral quotient(cid:859) to pro(cid:448)ide the i(cid:374)itial allo(cid:272)atio(cid:374) of seats (set at 111,166 for the post-2011 redistribution) Gerrymandering: manipulating constituency boundaries to increase the reelection probability of the members of the government party.