‘Population combined with wealth and taxation'

In twenty-first-century Britain we take it for granted that parliamentary constituencies contain roughly equal numbers of eligible voters, and that constituency boundaries are subject to periodic review by the Boundary Commissions for England, Scotland, and Wales. Indeed, within the last decade, steps have been taken to ensure greater equality of representation between England and Scotland in the aftermath of devolution. The English ‘electoral quota’—obtained by dividing the number of electors on the electoral register by the number of parliamentary seats—was applied to Scotland from 2005, with the effect that Scottish representation at Westminster fell from seventy-two seats to fifty-nine. ¹ The electoral quota provides a benchmark statistic for the Boundary Commissioners so that ‘the electorate of any constituency shall be as near the electoral quota as is practicable’. ² The British electoral system is governed, as far as possible, by the principle of an equal representation of the people, irrespective of individual voters’ willingness to participate in elections at the ballot box.