HYSON, Stewart <br/><br/>
Electoral boundary redistribution by independent commission in New Brunswick, 1990-94 

 -  2000 
<br/><br/> Elections do not just happen, nor do they consist solely of competitive campaigns and voting. Rather, they depend heavily on administrative structures of which the independent electoral boundaries commission has emerged as teh main mechanism for delineating the electorate into areal units for choosing representatives. As such, these commissions are a cornerstone of representative democracy as practised in Canada today, yet there is a dearth of knowledge as to how they fulfil practised in Canada today, yet there is a dearth of knowledge as to how they fulfil their role. Although the province of New Brunswick was late to join the electoral boundary revolution, its redistribution exercise of the early 1990s allows the opportunity to describe and assess the structure, operations and performance of the contemporary boundaries commission. The most immediate result for New Brunswick was the sharp curtailing of gerrymandering practices; in addition, spurred on by the egalitarian thrust of the Charter, the province's gross constituency disparities were replaced by one of the most egalitarian electoral maps in the country. Yet from the perspective of democratic process values including openness, participation and fairness, the New Brunswick Boundaries Commission fell short of its potential