Gerrymandering is the manipulation of boundaries of electoral districts or constituencies to swing an election a particular way. A good example is when the 19th-century Republican Party split the Dakota Territory into two states instead of one. That’s because each state got at least three electoral votes, regardless of the size of its population.
The OG gerrymander
Gerrymandering is named after one Elbridge Gerry, an American founding father, politician and diplomat who was the fifth vice president from 1813 until he died in 1814. He was also the governor of Massachusetts. During his second term, Republican-controlled legislation created district boundaries designed to increase the party’s control of state and national offices. This lead to some oddly shaped legislative areas, including one in Essex County (a political stronghold for the rival party, the Federalists) that a newspaper said looked like a ‘salamander’ (obvs). They named it the ‘Gerry-mander’ after Elbridge who signed the legislation that created it.
It worked as well – the weirdly shaped district elected three Democrat-Republicans that year. Previously the county had had five Federalist senators.
It’s worth pointing out that apparently Elbridge wasn’t happy about this suspect map redrawing, even if he did still sign the legislation that made it happen. According to his biographer he was ‘a nervous, birdlike little person’ with a stammer, and a habit of ‘contracting and expanding the muscles of his eye’ (I can’t even imagine what that actually looked like). This makes him sound like he might have been bullied into it, but he was no stranger to not signing stuff – in fact he refused to put his name to the American Constitution because he thought the Senate it created could become too tyrannical. So perhaps he would have thought twice about signing that district-redrawing bill if he’d known that two-hundred-and-something years later his name would have become synonymous with this type of cloak-and-dagger political jiggery pokery.
(Gerrymander is an example of an ‘eponym’ or a word named after a person. Check out this post for lots more eponyms, including leotard, diesel and bloomers. Sounds like a party…)
(DISCLAIMER: My knowledge of American politics is shockingly bad. So apologies in advance if any of my facts or terminology are wrong.)