“Though it is not part of the Commission’s mandate to study electoral reform or to recommend changes to the current electoral system, there were a number of submissions on this topic in the public consultation process . . . as a means of improving Nova Scotia’s representative democracy, by more accurately translating voter preferences into seats in the legislature. The distortions introduced by the current system, whereby only one member can be elected per constituency, with no allowance made for popular vote totals, can be a disincentive to political participation. This happens because all votes for losing candidates are, in effect, “thrown out,” and only those cast for the winning candidate in each riding count in terms of electing a representative. Some element of proportional representation is recommended as a means to “make every vote count.”

“Another rationale for electoral system reform concerns the difficulty of ensuring minority representation under the FPTP system. As noted above, this has become clear in the current electoral redistribution process with regard to Acadian and African Nova Scotian representation. The same point could be made for the small number of women elected to the legislature. Comparative literature on this topic clearly shows that political systems using some form of proportional representation perform better than FPTP systems in terms of minority and female representation in elected legislatures. . . As well, the dynamics of the system, which tend toward coalition building, would promote more co-operation and accommodation among parties in terms of the legislative agenda.

“There appear to be significant democratic benefits to be gained from incorporating some measure of proportional representation into the current FPTP electoral system. This no doubt explains why this option has been recommended by commissions and assemblies in a number of provinces over the past decade. The most popular recommendation in Canada has been to replace the FPTP electoral system with some form of mixed-member proportional (MMP) system, which combines some of the advantages of the existing single-member constituencies with greater proportionality.

“Recommendation: The Commission . . . therefore suggests that the Nova Scotia Legislature initiate a process involving both extensive critical examination and public consultation on the current electoral system as well as possible alternatives to it.”

I’m not a fan of affirmative action gerrymandering at all, and if you are going to do that sort of thing in the context of single member districts, its better to handle it the same way New Zealand has handled its Maori electorate, and India handled the Anglo-Indian minority after independence. And there were fairly strong historical and constitutional reasons for both exceptions.

I don’t have a problem with a commission drawing a majority-minority or minority-plurality district on community of interest grounds, as long as the district meets the other neutral criteria the commission has to work with, such as population variance and staying within local government boundaries, but this doesn’t seem to be the case here.

That said, though the Canadian boundary commissions are willing to create malapportioned districts for a large variety of reasons, they are actually pretty few in number and fall in the category of the anachronisms and eccentricities within a political system that in effect are fairly harmless. Most political systems contain a few of these.