Gerrymandering (redirected from Gerry-mandering)

gerrymandering

Drawing of electoral district lines in a way that gives advantage to a particular political party. The practice is named after Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who submitted to the state senate a redistricting plan that would have concentrated the voting strength of the Federalist Party in just a few districts, thereby giving disproportionate representation to the Democratic-Republican Party. Some of Gerry's new districts were necessarily odd-shaped; one district's outline, seen to resemble a salamander, gave rise to the scornful term gerrymander. The practice has persisted, and redistricting battles in state legislatures have often had to be decided by the courts. In some countries, independent commissions have been appointed to draw district boundaries. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries so-called “racial gerrymandering,” which aimed to ensure minority representation in some districts, was a controversial issue in the U.S.

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Gerrymandering 

a term from electoral geography designating a particular way of arranging election districts in the USA. Gerrymandering violates the principle of equal representation, which demands that an equal number of voters be represented by an equal number of representatives. By gerrymandering election districts, the governing party creates districts with an unequal number of voters in order to concentrate the votes of the opposition party in one or at most several districts and thus to obtain an advantage in other districts. Gerrymandering also violates the territorial principle by creating oddly shaped districts.

The term “gerrymandering” arose in 1812, when a cartoonist drew such a district in Massachusetts in the shape of a salamander, and the newspaper editor called the drawing a gerrymander, after E. Gerry, the governor of the state at that time.

Although laws passed in the USA in 1842, 1872, and 1902 demand the creation of compact election districts, gerrymandering still continues.

A. A. MISHIN