DCHP-2

electoral area DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• n. — British Columbia, Administration

  a region not included under the Municipal Act, but administered by the regional district to which it belongs.

  Type: 3. Semantic Change — In British Columbia, electoral areas are pieces of land that are "not incorporated under the Municipal Act" and are usually rural or sparsely populated (see the 2005 quotation). An electoral area is managed by an "electoral area director" (see the 2005 quotation). As seen in Chart 2, this term is almost exclusive to British Columbia.
  Names of electoral areas are alphabetized; for example, if one regional district has three different electoral areas, they would be labelled as such: [Regional District] A, [Regional District] B, [Regional District] C. An example would be "Electoral Area A," which operates under the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) and covers a total of 818 square kilometres of dispersed land (see the 2014 quotation). It includes nine different areas: "University of British Columbia (UBC) lands, the University Endowment Lands (UEL), Bowyer Island, Grebe Islets, Passage Island, Barnston Island, and areas of Howe Sound, Indian Arm and West Pitt Lake" (see Image 1 and the 2014 quotation).
  See also ITP Nelson, s.v. "electoral area", which is described as "in British Columbia".

  • Similar terms, "local electoral area" and "district electoral area", are also used in Ireland (see Chart 1).