Changing electoral districts in Slovenia: empirical challenges for geography.

Abstract

Designing electoral districts is never a straightforward task, as many different, often conflicting, principles must be taken into account. In Slovenia, similar population size and geographical and cultural homogeneity are the two main principles on which electoral district/constituency plans must be based. However, as both principles are only vaguely defined, this brings opportunities for their endless politicisation, potentially enabling gerrymandering, on the one hand, and challenges to geographers involved in the electoral districts/constituency design on the other. The experience gained in such a project is briefly presented, highlighting empirical solutions applied to approach the abovementioned challenges. Geoinformatic support plays an essential role in the process of designing electoral districts/constituencies and their versioning. Due to time constraints, it was not possible to fully develop and apply automatic procedures that provide acceptable results. However, our initial attempts suggest that automatic procedures can provide usable results (also in the design of other administrative spatial units) if the rules (the empirical form of the principles) are clearer and less elastic. Another empirical problem, the practical involvement of political parties in the process of electoral districting, has been attempted through a geoinformatic application that allows political parties to create their own district plans, perhaps leading to more problems than solutions.