ABSTRACT
Perhaps it has not in earlier chapters been stressed sufficiently that all elections to numerous assemblies take place through territorial constituencies. This need not be true of elections like the American presidential election, nor of plebiscites and referenda, though delimitation may be important in these instances: and there are, of course, borderline cases—in some countries some local councils with as many as fifteen or twenty members are chosen by the electorate as a whole. There are even exceptions to prove rules, such as the election of the Parliament of Israel, 120 members, in a single block. But no one now would dream of accepting J. S. Mill’s notion that a single assembly of about 600 members could be elected by all the electors voting in a single constituency. There is an approximation to J. S. Mill’s ideal in these systems which carry forward ‘unused’ votes from local constituencies to regional and national pools; but even these systems must be based on territorial delimitation of the original constituencies.
