Undemocratic — That’s how a group of elected officials and activists are describing the current Quebec electoral map.
The mayors of Hampstead, Montreal West, Côte St-Luc and others say the current law allows for some provincial ridings to be as much as 25 per cent larger or smaller than the average size of 48,992 electors per riding.
They’re challenging the current electoral law in court but want to see the provincial leaders make changes to the riding sizes so the size variations are less pronounced.
For instance, the riding of Arthabaska has 60,338 eligible voters — 23 per cent more than the Quebec average.
”It doesn’t make sense so the criteria has to be changed to be fair. One vote should count more or less the same everywhere in the province,” Marvin Rotrand, Montreal city councillor for Snowdon told Global News.
The group wants to see variations in riding sizes not exceeding 10 or 15 per cent — similar to Manitoba and New Brunswick.
The group argues the re-drawing of riding borders can be detrimental to the power of minorities by dividing up communities that were once concentrated in one riding but are now spread into two,
For instance, the ridings of Mont-Royal and Outremont have now merged into one while D’Arcy-McGee now includes parts of the Mont-Royal and Outremont districts.
”I think that D’Arcy-McGee is losing its question of being a natural community,” former MNA Lawrence Bergman for D’Arcy-McGee said. ”The unfairness is incredible,” he added.
The group hopes changes will be made to the electoral map within the next four years.