Mfarah

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Gerrymandering in Chile

Hi. I don't understand why you reverted my edits at Gerrymandering#Chile. Yes, the "binomial" electoral system is not "gerrymandering" per se, but the gerrymandering without the binomial system would not have produced the results desired by the dictatorship. Plus, you removed a reference which was superior and met WP:RS, unlike the previous one. Happy new year, regardless. Pristino (talk) 02:16, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

You said it yourself: it's not gerrymandering - it's a different kind of beast. The article starts off stating "gerrymandering is a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected districts.". We can agree that this did NOT happen. Yes, an electoral system was chosen to produce certain general results (to force the creation of two large political groups, to exclude both extreme left and extreme right and to force the disappearance of minuscule politial parties [think of PADENA, USOPO, etc.]), but there weren't any measures taken to produce a certain result in specific regions or districts, which is the definition of gerrymandering.

For examples of "proper" gerrymandering, let's suppose that in 1989 the government had moved the Ñuñoa-Macul border several blocks north, to force its (heavily PPD-voting) voters into district 25 (La Granja, Macul and San Joaquín) and away from district 21 (Ñuñoa y Providencia), giving the right-wing candidates in this district a chance to "double up". Or that in 1997, the government had stripped away a long "panhandle" of land from La Reina and Peñalolén and incorporated it into Las Condes, to make it impossible for the right-wing candidates to "double up" in district 23 (Las Condes, Vitacura and Lo Barnechea), as is usual over there. Nothing like that has happened - even the setting up of the electoral districts (for deputies' elections) and circumscriptions (for senators' elections) was done on a geographical/population basis.

Perhaps the deliberate choosing of the binominal system should go into an article about voting manipulation, but it doesn't really belong here.

Finally, yes, the new resource is better than the two ones you replaced. I just reinstated the entire paragraph without any edits, with the purpose of having a discussion before doing anything else.

Mfarah (talk) 11:19, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

gerrymander |ˈʤɛriˌmændər|

verb [ with obj. ] (often as noun gerrymandering)

manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.

• achieve (a result) by such manipulation: a total freedom to gerrymander the results they want.

—New Oxford American Dictionary.

Please read the reference you removed. Districts were indeed manipulated to favor one political group over the other to the maximum extent possible. Districts were manipulated both geographically as well as in population (district vary greatly both in area and, most importantly, in population, to a disturbingly high degree). Yes, gerrymandering was limited to choosing the most appropriate contiguous communes within a region. This, coupled with the 2-seat per district limitation, is a very overt type of gerrymandering and must be mentioned in the article. Pristino (talk) 07:17, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I read it. I guess we're going to have to accept we're in disagreement here - in the worst case, boundaries weren't manipulated: they were *set up* in what was, for all practical purposes, for the first time. Also, I read back then the draft proposals that were made (they were published in El Mercurio) before the government settled on the third and definitive one, and it's obvious the changes were made on strictly population and geographical basis. I do remember one example that contradicts the idea of gerrymandering: in the first draft (drawn mostly on the older population densities), Providencia was tied up in a district with Santiago. The second one (based on a perfectly proportional population to seats assignmnent) had Providencia by itself; this was unpopular because it assigned !42! seats to the city of Santiago, while sparsely populated regions barely got any. The third and definitive one had Providencia tied up with Ñuñoa, as it is today. Had a gerrymandering intention been in place, Providencia would have been kept alone, giving the right wing parties a good chance to "double up" there... yet that didn't happen.

Quite frankly, I look at the map of the districts and, at least in the Región Metropolitana's case, I don't see any "unnatural" grouping of communes to ensure a particular result in it.

Perhaps we should involve a third person in this discussion? Perhaps Juan Ignacio García? ;-)

Mfarah (talk) 01:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

You need to provide a source that says district boundaries weren't manipulated for political gain. I am providing one that says they were, so I ask you to please stop removing it until you find one that contradicts it. Cheers. Pristino (talk) 12:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

No, what needs to be done here is to reach an agreement on what the definition of the word "gerrymandering" covers - we actually agree on the same thing here: the military government set up an electoral system that favored certain... er... qualities (see my paragraph above), but it did not modify existing districts to guarantee specific results.

*You* say this qualifies as gerrymandering and *I* say it's a different kind of beast. Hell, let's look at this as an opportunity - we can coin a new verb: "To Pinochet", meaning "To set up an entirely new election system in a new or newly restored democracy with specific goals in mind". I'm guessing several countries on where democracy were to be implanted suddenly are candidates to have a "pinocheted" electoral system. We can leave gerrymandering as a vice of continuously existing democracies (USA, for example, where gerrymandering is prevalent).

Mfarah (talk) 16:08, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not saying that what happened in Chile constituted "gerrymandering". The SOURCE is saying it and I'm citing it. You do not provide a source contradicting it. The definition of gerrymandering is clear (see above) and, according to that definition, and according to the source I'm citing, the electoral districts in Chile were indeed modified to favor a political group. If you revert again, I will request mediation. Pristino (talk) 18:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Here's another source, if you're still in doubt. This is from a study released by the Chilean Library of Congress, citing a work by Patricio Navia and Priscilla Cantillana:

"... el mapa electoral (los límites de los distritos) utilizado en Chile desde 1989 hasta la fecha fue diseñado para favorecer sistemáticamente a una opción política, por lo que el requisito de representatividad... no está siendo adecuadamente satisfecho".

Pristino (talk) 18:58, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

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