Ever since the Founding Fathers’ “Great Compromise” — equal representation for each state in the Senate and representation of each state based on population in the House of Representatives — politicians have been gaming the system.
This is no exaggeration. In drawing the very first congressional maps in 1788, anti-Federalists in Virginia forced Federalist candidate James Madison into the same seat as anti-Federalist James Monroe, hoping to keep Madison out of Congress because Madison was less likely to win there. Madison won the election anyway.
Gerrymandering is drawing legislative district lines to subordinate adherents of one political party and entrench a rival party in power. One gerrymandering strategy to game the system is cracking: splitting groups of voters of the same party affiliation across multiple districts. A second is packing: cramming groups of voters likely to elect their preferred candidates into as few districts as possible.
The word “gerrymander” is a portmanteau bonding the name of Elbridge Gerry and “salamander.” Gerry was governor of Massachusetts in the early 19th century. When running for reelection in 1812, he signed a law creating a redistricting plan to keep his political party in power at the behest of his political cronies — even though he considered such redistricting to be “highly disagreeable.” It worked.
“Gerry-Mander” was coined as the headline in the March 26, 1812, edition of the Boston Gazette. Illustrating that article is the drawing of a salamander-shaped winged serpent outlining the newly-drawn district. That image was quickly reprinted in Federalist newspapers in Salem and Boston. Even though Gerry’s name was pronounced with a hard “G,” as in “grotesque,” “gerrymander” has always been pronounced with a soft “G,” as in “gentle.”
Now, gerrymandering has taken a new extreme turn. The Texas Legislature just passed a redistricting map to flip five Democratic seats in next year’s midterm elections. Legislators in Democratic states have threatened tit-for-tat responses. This past week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two redistricting bills and declared a special election this November asking voters to grant final approval to newly drawn congressional districts to neutralize redistricting in Texas. When and how might that ever end?
In addition, last month President Donald Trump instructed the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, to begin work immediately on a new census based on the results of the 2024 presidential election. The most recent census was in 2020, and the next one, as mandated by the Constitution, isn’t until 2030. Article I of the Constitution empowers only Congress, not the president, to carry out the census. A federal law empowers the commerce secretary to conduct a mid-decade census, but the results cannot be used to redistribute each state’s share of seats in the House of Representatives or votes in the Electoral College.
To boot, Republicans in Congress have proposed bills to exclude millions of immigrants from being counted. Those bills violate the 14th Amendment, which requires that “the whole number of persons in each state” must be included in each decennial census.
Over many years, Republicans and Democrats have both engaged in gerrymandering. Either way, it is deeply undemocratic.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice: “Rather than voters choosing their representatives, gerrymandering empowers politicians to choose their voters. … When that happens, partisan concerns almost invariably take precedence over all else. That produces maps where electoral results are virtually guaranteed even in years where the party drawing maps has a bad year.”
