The Gerrymander

by Jack R Johnson 08.2025

The familiar Gerrymander illustration of a bizarrely winged dragon was etched by Elkanah Tisdale as a political cartoon meant to ridicule the practice. A portmanteau of Governor Elbridge Gerry and salamander, the word ‘gerrymander’ was coined on March 26, 1812, in the Boston Gazette in reaction to the redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under Governor Elbridge Gerry. In fairness, Gerry drew up the map at the behest of the ‘Democratic-Republican’ party even though he found the proposal “highly disagreeable.” His instincts were good. He lost the next election, but the redistricting was a success: his party retained control of the legislature. It’s been downhill ever since.

According to Thomas Hunter, from the University of West Georgia, Gerrymandering goes even further back in our history. After English colonists founded the United States, gerrymandering “began almost immediately. There’s evidence that Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina drew districts to benefit certain constituencies over others,” though Hunter admits “I think that what they did in Massachusetts in 1812 really was on steroids compared to what had gone on before.”

To give some sense of how powerful an electoral tool a gerrymander can be, consider the recent elections in 2012. Obama carried Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Republicans drew congressional lines in those states and during the midterms won 64 of 94 seats. In other words, despite winning the majority by nearly 4.9 million votes, the Democrats actually lost seats in the House of Representatives because of artful gerrymandering.

The playing field becomes unfair with gerrymandering, but worse is the insulation lawmakers sense in a “safe” district. Many times, the result is a candidate who votes an extreme ideology without worrying about consequences at the ballot box.

Given its negatives, it’s no surprise that the vast majority of Americans disapprove of gerrymandering. A recent Yougov poll found that most Americans view it as unfair (76%), a major problem (76%), and something that should be illegal (69%).

In fact, shortly after the Obama election, a national grassroots campaign began to end gerrymandering. According to David Daly writing in The Guardian, “In 2018, grassroots movements in Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Utah and Colorado established citizen commissions or other nonpartisan processes to draw lines. […]Voters and public interest law firms won new maps in states including Florida (ahead of 2016) and Pennsylvania (2018), and won lower-court decisions in Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, North Carolina and Wisconsin that struck down extreme maps. This helped Democrats take back the House in 2018 without actually defeating the gerrymander: almost three-quarters of the seats they won were drawn by commissions or courts.”

**

There may have been a solution through the courts, but the campaign to abolish gerrymandering was dealt a fatal blow by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. In a case from North Carolina entitled Rucho v Common Cause, a 5-4 majority ruled that partisan gerrymandering was a nonjusticiable political issue. In other words, the decision, written by Roberts, ruled that partisan gerrymandering is a political question beyond the jurisdiction of federal courts. Federal courts can do nothing to stop political parties from manipulating voting district boundaries for their own advantage.

The decision, noted Daly, “closed the federal courts to future claims at the precise moment that they’d become the most important part of the solution. After all, politicians have long proven unwilling to reform the very process that elected them and helped entrench them in office.”

Roberts argument that there was no clear and manageable standard was specious, according to Daly, given that “multiple federal judges had already pointed to multiple clear standards.” In fact, entire communities and statewide voting blocks were based on those standards.

Now CNN reports that Texas Republicans’ recent move to redraw the state’s congressional districts in the middle of the decade has little precedent, and “for once nobody is pretending this is about anything other than raw politics.” President Donald Trump said this week that the GOP is “entitled to five more seats” in the state. Democrats have pledged to respond in kind by re-drawing maps for California. Other states – red and blue – are actively considering jumping into the fray with their own map overhauls. Republicans could add as many as five seats in both Texas and in Florida. They could also go for smaller gains in states like Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and South Carolina. Democrats could conceivably try to add five districts in California, a handful in New York and possibly one more seat in states like Illinois and Maryland.

G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers said that no matter who wins, ultimately, the voter loses. “If parties engage in a state-by-state effort to rig maps in their team’s favor, Americans will end up with even fewer competitive congressional districts.” He said, “That means fewer seats changing hands, and fewer opportunities […] We are staring not just into a ‘doom loop’ of partisanship, but into the anti-democratic whirlpool that threatens to consume our republic for good.”

Hang tight, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. The winged dragon --like the one etched by Elkanah Tisdale some 200 years ago-- is still shaping our history.