The painter Gilbert Stuart was inspired by the awkward shape of an electoral district on a map he saw in a newpaper editor’s office. He decorated the snake-shaped district with a head, a set of wings and claws, making it out to be some kind of antediluvian monster.
“That will do for a salamander,” he said to the editor.
“Gerrymander!”, replied he to Stuart.
For the man responsible for the odd shape of that electoral district, in eastern Massachusetts, was Elbridge Gerry, governor of the state. His Democratic-Republican partisans had stitched together the district in such a way as to assure the electoral victory of their candidate and therefore the defeat of the candidate for the other main party, the Federalists. The year was 1812, and the first of many recorded uses of the term occurred that spring.
The continued popularity of the term – and relevance up to the present day – stems from the practice in the United States of revising the boundaries of electoral districts every 10 years, in order to keep up with demographic change. A very wise provision, and many of those districts do in fact change, but not always with the accurate representation of the electorate in mind.
In fact very often the redistrictings perversely reflect the attempts of one party or another to gain a ‘safe’ seat, in which the other side can’t win. Legal maybe, but hardly very democratic.
The term is also relevant in the United Kingdom, as in other countries that elect their officials via the ‘first past the post’ system. Gerrymandering is less relevant in countries with a system which emphasises proportional representation.
This cartoon dates from 1812, and depicts the very first ‘gerrymander’ – if you’re a stickler for historical accuracy, please pronounce with a hard g, just like the name of the governor. The word has since been in use as a verb and a noun, depicting the action of redistricting with intent of political gain, as well as the resultant unlikely-shaped district.
This map was taken from Sidhart’s Daily Muses, apparently a blog by an Indian bloke. The entry dates from April 18, 2005, and gives some additional background to the origin of gerrymandering.
Cool! I never knew the origin of that term. (But that’s not exactly western Mass – it’s actually quite eastern!)
Comment by abby — December 19, 2006 @ 4:01 am
@abby:
You’re absolutely right – correcting straight away. Thanks!
Comment by strangemaps — December 19, 2006 @ 6:47 am
What’s funny is that the district represented here would probably not even be considered gerrymandered today. . . districts today look more like insects with “legs” that creep out up a single street for miles to that they can include just *three or four houses* in another neighborhood. This is all thanks to the wonders of computers linked to census data. Cheers! -Knappy
Comment by Knappy — December 19, 2006 @ 3:05 pm
Then again, you can drive from Chelsea to Salisbury in less than an hour today, but the trip would have taken much longer to complete in 1812 and so the map represented a real hardship for legislators.
Comment by brittain33 — December 19, 2006 @ 5:33 pm
I have been fascinating with this topic ever since I first heard the origins of the word. It’s great to actually see the original map for the first time. Frankly, it’s almost a bit disappointing since my mind had thought up more elaborate maps, as Knappy commented.
Comment by lurker — February 13, 2007 @ 12:29 am
It might be interesting to note that Gerrymandering was one of the ruses used by the pro-unionist governments of Northern Ireland to re-affirm there electrol supremecy over the majority catholic nationalist areas untill the civil rights movements of teh 1960s and ensuing fall off the Stormont Government.
Comment by Paul — February 13, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
Current U.S. Congressional districts are just about as weird as the original gerrymander, and suprisingly hard to find:
http://riskman.typepad.com/perilocity/2006/11/congressional_c.html
Comment by John S. Quarterman — March 2, 2007 @ 9:39 pm
The more I read about the American propensity for gerrymandering, the more I am bewildered that the public allows it – some of the electoral maps are outrageous.
Do they know ?
Apparently both major parties are equally corrupt…but Bush managed to contrive an extra 10 seats in Texas to assure a Republican HoR.
Comment by Robert — March 11, 2007 @ 3:42 am
Bush had nothing to do with the Texas redistricting plan.
Comment by jm — July 11, 2007 @ 12:40 am
I grew up in that map. Apparently Swampscott and Revere didn’t exist yet.
Comment by K — January 20, 2008 @ 7:01 pm
Well, the popular view of the situation is indeed that it’s done to create a ’safe seat’ for one party or another.
Sometimes. In fact, this used to be what it was predominantly used for; this was before the quantum leap was made in one of the state machines (I’d bet a liberal Republican one sometime in the last quarter of the 20th century – Pennsylvania, maybe? California? Not sure) that it was possible to gain great things by making a safe seat for the other guy.
This practice, which is what we usually associate ‘gerrymandering’ with these days, involves a generally single-party-dominated legislature/executive lumping as many of a single political group as they can get away with into a single district. The result is a couple of seats that normally go uncontested, or are won by margins usually associated with massive fraud (victories with 90% of the vote are not uncommon), and the remainder of the seats only semi-competitive for the party with that safe seat.
Texas has been particularly egregious about this, creating giant sprawling hell-districts to concentrate very nearly all of the state’s Hispanic Catholics and African-Americans into convoluted districts that unfailingly go to the Dems in election year – and do so more or less alone. In effect, due to gerrymandering, Texas is not a single state with a Republican-favoring swing of around 5%, but two states – one small and with a Democratic-favoring swing of better than 40%, one fairly large and with a Republican-favoring swing of 10% or more.
Hooray for fraud!
Comment by alec — May 10, 2008 @ 9:17 am
correction: the last quarter of the 19th century. We had gerrymandering down pat by the 70s.
Comment by alec — May 10, 2008 @ 9:17 am
thanks alot
Comment by Tony — May 4, 2009 @ 2:29 am
thanks for this map
good
luck
Comment by Solomon — May 11, 2009 @ 7:15 am
merci
Comment by aspicco . — May 17, 2009 @ 4:51 am
teşekkür ederim
Comment by yory — June 12, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
Vielen Dank
Comment by moon — July 3, 2009 @ 3:51 am
Muchas gracias
Comment by sun — July 4, 2009 @ 6:40 am