Continental electorates have become largely impotent, unable to effect decisive change in policy or in many cases even to change the political leadership.
The Archbishopric Of Mainz, one of the seven electorates of the Holy Roman Empire, became a powerful state during the middle ages and retained some of its importance until the dissolution of the empire in 1806.
Bournonville, the imperial commander who now replaced Montecucculi, lay in the Cologne and Trier electorates.
The principle adopted in distributing the representation is that of equal electoral districts, modified in practice by a preference given to the distant and rural constituencies at the cost of the metropolitan electorates.