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In representative democracies, Gerrymandering refers to political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent of creating undue advantage for a party, group, or socio-economic class within the constituency.
A county is a geographical region of a country used for administrative or other purposes in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French conté or cunté denoting a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count (earl) or a viscount. Literal equivalents in other languages, derived from the equivalent of "count", are now seldom used officially, including comté, contea, contado, comtat, condado, Grafschaft, graafschap, and zhupa in Slavic languages; terms equivalent to English language administrative terms such as municipality, district, circuit and commune/community are now often instead used.
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
The contiguous United States or officially the conterminous United States, also known as the Lower 48, consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the District of Columbia on the continent of North America. The terms exclude the non-contiguous states of Alaska and Hawaii and all other offshore insular areas, such as American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These differ from the related term continental United States, which includes Alaska but excludes the Hawaiian Islands and all U.S. territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
In the United States, a county is an administrative or political subdivision of a state that consists of a geographic region with specific boundaries and usually some level of governmental authority. The term "county" is used in 48 U.S. states, while Louisiana and Alaska have functionally equivalent subdivisions called parishes and boroughs, respectively.
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions of municipalities, school district, or political district.
An unincorporated area is a region not governed by a local municipal corporation. Similarly, an unincorporated community is a settlement not governed by its own local municipal corporation, but is administered as part of larger administrative divisions, such as a township, parish, borough, county, city, canton, state, province, or country. Occasionally, municipalities dissolve or disincorporate, which may happen if they become fiscally insolvent, and services become the responsibility of a higher administration. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world have either no unincorporated areas at all, or these are very rare; typically remote, outlying, sparsely populated, or uninhabited areas.
A township in some states of the United States is a small geographic area.
An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, (election) precinct, electoral area, circumscription, or electorate, is a subdivision of a larger state created to provide its population with representation in the larger state's legislative body. That body, or the state's constitution or a body established for that purpose, determines each district's boundaries and whether each will be represented by a single member or multiple members. Generally, only voters (constituents) who reside within the district are permitted to vote in an election held there. District representatives may be elected by a first-past-the-post system, a proportional representative system, or another voting method. They may be selected by a direct election under universal suffrage, an indirect election, or another form of suffrage.
Local government in the United States refers to governmental jurisdictions below the level of the state. Most states and territories have at least two tiers of local government: counties and municipalities. Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the U.S. Census Bureau terms county equivalents in those states. Civil townships or towns are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.
Congressional districts, also known as electoral districts, legislative districts, wards, and electorates in other nations, are divisions of a larger administrative region that represent the population of a region in the larger congressional body. Notably, in Australia, electoral districts are referred to as "electorates" or "seats"; in Canada, these are called "constituencies", or, more informally, "ridings". Countries with congressional districts include the United States, the Philippines, and Japan.
Apportionment is the process by which seats in a legislative body are distributed among administrative divisions, such as states or parties, entitled to representation. This page presents the general principles and issues related to apportionment. The page apportionment by country describes specific practices used around the world. The page Mathematics of apportionment describes mathematical formulations and properties of apportionment rules.
In geography, statistics and archaeology, a settlement, locality or populated place is a community in which people live. The complexity of a settlement can range from a small number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas. Settlements may include hamlets, villages, towns and cities. A settlement may have known historical properties such as the date or era in which it was first settled, or first settled by particular people.
Virginia is currently divided into 11 congressional districts, each represented by a member of the United States House of Representatives. The districts were redrawn most recently in 2016 by court order.
The Rotating Regional Primary System is a proposed system for reform of the United States presidential primary process, in which the country would be divided into four regions for primary elections. The plan has been promoted since 1999 by the National Association of Secretaries of State.
Boundary delimitation is the drawing of boundaries, particularly of electoral precincts, states, counties or other municipalities. In the context of elections, it can be called redistribution and is used to prevent unbalance of population across districts. In the United States, it is called redistricting. Unbalanced or discriminatory delimitation is called "gerrymandering." Though there are no internationally agreed processes that guarantee fair delimitation, several organizations, such as the Commonwealth Secretariat, the European Union and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems have proposed guidelines for effective delimitation.
A law enforcement agency (LEA), in American English, is any government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws.
The barrios of Puerto Rico are the primary legal divisions of the seventy-eight municipalities of Puerto Rico. Each of Puerto Rico's 78 municipios are divided into geographical sections called barrios and as of 2010 there were 902.
Moycarkey is an electoral division in County Tipperary in Ireland. It was originally an electoral division in the Thurles Poor Law Union in North Tipperary but is still used for various administrative purposes.
Buolick, sometimes written as Boolick or Baolick, is an electoral division in County Tipperary in Ireland. It was originally an electoral division in the Thurles Poor Law Union but is still used for various administrative purposes.
References
- ↑ Wetlands Metadata for the Lower 48 States, US Fish and Wildlife Service Archived 5 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Census Metropolitan Area, Statistics Canada Archived 17 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ The Electoral Geography of Weimar Germany: Exploratory Spatial Data Analyses of Protestant Support for the Nazi Party, by John O'Loughlin
- ↑ "Contiguous". Legal Information Insititute (Cornell Law School). June 2021. Retrieved 28 Dec 2021.