Gerrymander, << JEHR ee `man` duhr, >> is the practice of dividing a city, state, or country into voting districts to favor the party in power or some other group. The word gerrymander comes from the name of Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. A bill passed by the Massachusetts legislature in 1812 divided the state into districts for the election of state senators. This division grouped together certain counties that had large Federalist majorities. In this way, the Federalists could win only a few seats in the legislature by huge majorities, while their opponents could win many more seats by small majorities.
One of the new districts had a shape much like that of a mythical animal. Some people said it looked like a salamander, but a guest at a dinner party suggested that it should be called a gerrymander. The word became popular with Federalists and later became part of the American language. Some state constitutions forbid gerrymandering. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1962 (Baker v. Carr) that citizens may challenge in the federal courts unequal distribution of seats in state legislatures. In 1964, it ruled that U.S. congressional districts (Wesberry v. Sanders) must be as equal in population as possible, and that state legislative districts (Reynolds v. Sims) must meet the same requirement. The court also said that both houses of a state legislature must follow the principle known as “one-person, one-vote.” Gerrymandering still takes place, but now it must produce districts of equal population. Computers are used to produce such districts.
In the late 1900’s, gerrymandering was used to create voting districts in which certain minority groups made up the majority of the voters. But in the 1990’s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race could not be used as the chief factor in creating U.S. congressional districts. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts may not intervene to block redistricting maps drawn to favor a particular political party.
