Editing Gerrymandering (section)

=====Parliamentary Elections=====
Prior to the establishment of [[Irish Home Rule|Home Rule]] in [[Northern Ireland]], the UK government had installed the [[single transferable vote]] (STV) system in Ireland to secure fair elections in terms of proportional representation in its [[Parliament of Northern Ireland|Parliaments]]. After two elections under that system, [[House of Commons (Method of Voting and Redistribution of Seats) Act (Northern Ireland) 1929|in 1929]] Stormont changed the electoral system to be the same as the rest of the [[United Kingdom]]: a single-member [[first past the post]] system. The only exception was for the election of four Stormont MPs to represent the [[Queen's University of Belfast]]. Some believe that the boundaries were gerrymandered to under-represent Nationalists.<ref name="coogan637" /> Other geographers and historians, for instance Professor [[John H. Whyte]], disagree.<ref name="whyte" /><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/hnihoc.htm |title=Northern Ireland House of Commons, 1921–1972 |publisher=Ark.ac.uk |access-date=5 August 2009}}</ref> They have argued that the electoral boundaries for the [[Parliament of Northern Ireland]] were not gerrymandered to a greater level than that produced by any single-winner election system, and that the actual number of Nationalist MPs barely changed under the revised system (it went from 12 to 11 and later went back up to 12). Most observers have acknowledged that the change to a single-winner system was a key factor, however, in stifling the growth of smaller political parties, such as the [[Northern Ireland Labour Party]] and [[Independent Unionist]]s. In the 1967 election, Unionists won 35.5% of the votes and received 60% of the seats, while Nationalists got 27.4% of the votes but received 40% of the seats. This meant that both the Unionist and Nationalist parties were over-represented, while the Northern Ireland Labour Party and [[Independent politician|Independents]] (amounting to more than 35% of the votes cast) were severely under-represented.

After Westminster reintroduced direct rule in 1973, it restored the single transferable vote (STV) for [[1973 Northern Ireland Assembly election|elections]] to the [[Northern Ireland Assembly (1973)|Northern Ireland Assembly]] in the following year, using the same definitions of constituencies as for the Westminster Parliament. Currently, in Northern Ireland, all elections use STV except those for positions in the [[Westminster Parliament]], which follow the pattern in the rest of the United Kingdom by using "first past the post."