Gerrymandering

On November 6th, about 60% of voters in Michigan approved changes in the state’s constitution which intend to frustrate partisan control for designing legislative boundaries in a state which has become notorious for its weirdly shaped electoral districts. “Gerrymandering” by the party in power has led to voting districts in many states which have little to do with geography.  They are, literally, “all over the map.”

Gerrymandering has created electoral districts which tend to assure that one party’s candidates win some seats while the party in power wins even more seats without much of a challenge.  This causes the candidates for the nomination by each party to make little effort to address the concerns of independent or middle-of-the-road voters. To achieve the nomination candidates must appeal to the more rigid or extreme thinkers in the dominating base of their party.  And this has resulted in polarized politicians and legislatures which can agree on nothing and cannot resolve anything.

The term “gerrymander” derives from an early 19th Century governor of Massachusetts who decided it might benefit him to reconfigure electoral boundaries near Boston, saturating a few senate seats with opposition voters but packing more districts with his own party’s faithful.  That governor was Elbridge Gerry.

Gerry (pronounced with a hard “g”) was no novice.  He had signed the Declaration of Independence.  He had helped establish the Library of Congress.  Eventually he became the fifth Vice President of the United States, serving just 20 months before his death, but casting nine tie-breaking votes in the US Senate during that brief tumultuous tenure.

One Gerry-influenced reconfigured electoral district around Boston was so disconnected to geography that when it was seen on the map it looked very much like a salamander.  Soon political cartoonists depicted the district as a fire-breathing, claw-bearing creature that resembled a dragon.  It didn’t take long for Governor Gerry’s critics to capitalize and label his scheme “Gerrymandering.”

JER