One of the things that Yorkton never really has to worry about is figuring out what riding we are in. In both provincial and federal politics, Yorkton is an anchor point, right in name of the riding itself. If you live in Yorkton, you vote in the one that says Yorkton, there’s no mystery involved. In a way, the people who live here don’t appreciate how easy they’ve got it.
Take a look at the edge of this very riding in the upcoming federal election and you begin to see how complicated it can get. In particular, one needs to look at the area where I’m originally from, which is Watson, which is currently barely within the Yorkton-Melville riding. This is the first time it has been on the western edge of this particular riding, previously being a part of Saskatoon-Humboldt for several years. Now that the boundaries were redrawn to allow for some urban-only ridings in Saskatoon and Regina, that area is now one where all of the borders collide.
Watson is with us, in Yorkton-Melville. Englefeld, a mere eight kilometers away, and formerly within the same riding, is not with us, instead being part of the Carleton Trail-Eagle Creek riding. Yet, my brother’s farm, positioned squarely between the two towns, isn’t in the same riding as either of them, instead barely being part of the north edge of Moose Jaw-Lake Centre-Lanigan. The result is a challenge for voters, who can quickly get confused about who their options are, as well as candidates, since you’re never completely sure who can actually vote for you. Provincially, the need to balance out with the small towns is evident much closer to home, as in the next election Canora-Pelly’s boundary moves further west, and will now wrap around Yorkton itself, absorbing rural voters to both the west and south.
The challenge of drawing the electoral map becomes evident when you’re hitting the edge of any particular riding, because the purpose of the sometimes strange boundaries is to have the population as equal as you possibly can. You start with the major population centers and go out from there. Small towns are clearly being used to balance out the population of each riding. The towns of Watson, Leroy and Englefeld, for example, don’t have a substantial population, which makes them great places to put a border – if you find one riding running a bit low in any given election, you can change the border around one of those towns to rebalance it. This has been the case provincially especially, where there are more ridings to consider, rural voters tend to be the ones most affected by any change in the boundaries just because they are an easy way to balance out the population overall, sometimes down to the house.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, boundaries have to shift as population changes, but it is something that we have to be aware of when it comes to voter engagement. It can be a challenge to actually know who represents you, and in many cases, the person who represents you isn’t going to be the most useful person for your specific needs – if none of the nearby population centres are actually in your riding, the MP or MLA you’re going to find most useful isn’t going to be the one you vote for, because they’re not the one that represents the actual services you use, all because of a quirk in the way the borders run.
