Superconstituency proposal

http://www.statesassembly.gov.je/documents/propositions/46139-15963-1952009.pdf
            
Privileges and Procedures have come up with a "superconstituency" proposal, which I think is a good idea, and involves removing the Senators, but not the Constables.
 
I think, however, that there is an imbalance in their groupings. This is because they look at residents per deputy in the new units, whereas I would contend that for parity to exist, they should be looking at residents per member in the States, especially as they will be retaining the Constables of each Parish.

 

 

	Pop'n	Totals	Deps.	Res/Dep	Dep+Con	Res/MP
St Helier 1	14,155	14,155	6	2,359	6	2,359
St Helier 2	14,155	14,155	6	2,359	7	2,022
Grouville	4,702
St Clement	8,196	12,898	6	2,150	8	1,612
St Saviour	12,491
St Martin	3,628	16,119	7	2,303	9	1,791
Trinity	2,718
St John	2,618
St Mary	1,591
St Ouen	3,803
St Lawrence	4,702	15,432	6	2,572	11	1,403
St Brelade	10,134
St Peter	4,293	14,427	6	2,405	8	1,803
	87,186	87,186	37	14,148	49	10,990
Average	37	2356
Average	49	1779
Average				4042		3140
Std				137		331

 

As can be seen from my table, there is a great deal more imbalance in representation when we include the Constables, and when we average the residents per deputy / residents per member of states, it becomes even clearer. The last figure, the Standard Deviation (Std), is a commonplace statistical measure of the spread of a distribution, showing how widely a range varies. If you think of a bell curve, for example, it can be very narrow, with little spread from the average, or very long, with a good deal of spread. Looking at these figures, once we introduce the Constables into the equation, we can see that the spread  increases. If the figures followed a normal distribution, one would expect about 95% of the vote differential to be within 2 standard deviations, i.e. 137x2=274, or 331*2=662.
 
I would therefore argue that the Deputies allocation within the superconstituencies be altered to reduce this disparity, especially for that involving Trinity, St Mary etc while agreeing with the idea and the boundaries given in principle, which is an excellent one.