Talk:Electoral district

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Question: Should this redirect to Electorate, rather than to Constituency ? --Nickj 00:37, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

'Electoral seat' rather than 'electoral district'?

The article looks like an attempt to use electoral district as a generic.

It seems to me however that electoral seat is more generic, not least because electoral district had specific statutory meaning in Scotland, until 1996, under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, and was definitely not a parliamentary or national assembly seat. The Scottish electoral district was regional a council seat and might have been called a ward but that legislators seemed to want a term such that the regional council seat could not be confused with the contemporaneous district council ward.

What the article says at present about the United Kingdom is misleading. Anyone who knows the UK would not use electoral district to refer to a parliamentary or national assembly electoral seat (constituency), but might use it to refer to a local government electoral seat.

Laurel Bush (talk) 18:38, 28 November 2008 (UTC).[reply]

There's no good solution to this problem (varieties of English), but in general Wikipedia prefers to use the unambiguous phrase. Unfortunately I'm afraid "electoral seat" might be even more ambiguous - I've never actually seen the term before, so I had to guess at its meaning after reading your headline. Until seeing your explanation, I thought it just meant a position that can be won (and not a physical area), analogous to the term seat. I suspect many others would encounter this confusion - a Google search shows the term "electoral district" to be over 100 times more common than "electoral seat"; "electoral district" is also the term used generically in Political Science journals. "Electoral district" can also be easily shortened to the generic district as well in the article text; it would be a bit weird to use "electoral seat" for the title and then refer to it as a "district" in the main text. Scott Ritchie (talk) 20:38, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

UK parliamentary constituencies are often called seats. Something needs to be done about the article's misleading reference to the UK. Laurel Bush (talk) 12:22, 1 December 2008 (UTC).[reply]

The expression "seat" refers literally to the sucessful politician's chair in the legislative chamber. It has very little meaning to a description of the boundaries of the region within which the voters who elect that politician reside. Of course, it is the voters of that area who send the candidate to his seat. The formal and informal terminology for the districting arrangements vary widely between the English-speaking countries. Even in a single country, multiple names are used. For example, in Australia, the districts are legally called "divisions", but almost nobody calls them that. They are also called "electorates" and they are also called "seats". One would refer to politician Mr XYZ's "seat", but an ordinary voter would not normally say that they reside a particular "electorate".

Anyway the point is that "electoral district" is about the most generic, non-country-specific descriptor that can be indentified for a general discussion of the topic.Eregli bob (talk) 18:42, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

^{[citation needed]}, as the say. "Electoral district" doesn't look like a generic term to me, but rather a term used for a specific thing in a couple of countries. It also sounds similar to district, a term used for administrative areas in various countries. Personally speaking, I think the title 'Electoral area' would make the scope of the article clearer.

For what it's worth, 'electoral seat' sounds awkward to me. Aoeuidhtns (talk) 12:46, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Constituency

I've merged Constituency here. Three years after it was created it's part dictdef, part disambiguation, with one line about franking privilege which I copied. I also merged constituent (politics) which was a similar mess, though it had more substance, which I included in Electoral district#Constituency work. I don't see what current benefit there is for having separate articles; it's not as though there is currently a huge mass of information. There is scope for an article about "Constituency" in the sense of "group of voters with some commonality", but for now I've just listed interest group at constituency (disambiguation) as the closest match currently available.

Also added a Electoral district#Non-geographic constituencies section, which suggests the overall article might be better moved to "Constituency" (!), or "Electorate". jnestorius^(talk) 22:03, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for giving the article some love. Really, what it needs is just more good content. When we have enough we can worry about whether it's more about (people) constituencies or districts. Scott Ritchie (talk) 07:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the merging of constituency (more of a territory one represents) and an electoral district (district used in an election), makes it pretty hard to describe the situation in the Netherlands, where there are 20 electoral districts, in which the voters may not be offered the same lists of candidates and parties, but the votes are all counted as if those electoral districts form one multi-member constituency...ThW5 (talk) 18:44, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maori Electorates

It's incorrect to say that Maori electorates in New Zealand aren't geographical - they are geographical. They cover the country geographically as the General electoral seats do - the only difference is that only people on the Maori electoral roll can vote for them, just as only people on the General roll can vote in the General electorates. 60.234.139.97 (talk) 05:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Technical terms

There are 24 redirects to this page, many of which refer to official terms used in various countries. I've just added a redirect for a second of these (electoral division, a term used in England and Wales), but I wonder if there's enough material to make a dab page for this subject. This page could then start with a line which reads something along the lines of "This article is about electoral districts in general. For specific terms see Electoral district (disambiguation)." Or should I just edit the Electoral division page? Aoeuidhtns (talk) 11:58, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If there is substantial material to add about the meaning, history and implications of this subject in a particular country, by all means create a separate article. You might want to create it in user space first e.g. at User:Aoeuidhtns/Electoral division and ask here for opinions once we can see what you have come up with.

However, creating country-specific articles which have substantial overlap in content/meaning would go against the policy WP:Content forking.

You could consider creating List of national terms for electoral districts, if it would be interesting or useful; but I suspect that it might not be either!

Probably the best option is to consider expanding the section here titled "Terminology". – Fayenatic (talk) 17:47, 17 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]