Eldridge Gerry begat gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering begat safe one-party districts.
After the census of 2010, safe one-party districts begat a handful of medium-sized states in which Democrats won the popular vote and Republicans won far more Congressional seats.
Safe one-party districts begat only-the-tea-party-extremists-can-win districts.
Only-the-tea-party-extremists-can-win sentiment from a lot of unfairly-structured districts begat the craziness that has shut down the government.
Today’s shutdown is only a precursor of things to come. These extremists will keep on winning. In the long run, the only solution is to overthrown Eldridge Gerry. In every state, redistricting should be the responsibility of a neutral, non-partisan body, so the result will be district borders that do not favor any party or any incumbent. Massachusetts started this mess; we should end it. But we cannot do so as long as we remain part of the problem. We need to take the responsibility for redistricting away from our legislators!
seamusromney says
We should only end partisan re-districting if the rest of the country does. Otherwise, the additional Democrat we likely gain from gerrymandering is needed to offset the tons of additional Republicans. What you’re suggesting is unilateral disarmament. I’d support a national non-partisan redistricting commission, but absolutely not a state-level change without the national one.
Christopher says
…if Gerry hadn’t thought of it someone else would have.
Gerrymandering is also largely about incumbent protection. It seems to me that state legislatures might have tried to protect their incumbents from primaries as well, or at least giving cover to moderation by including a few more voters from the opposite party.
hlpeary says
Elbridge Gerry of Marblehead, MA
Former Vice President of the United States
Elbridge Thomas Gerry was an American statesman and diplomat. As a Democratic-Republican he was selected as the fifth Vice President of the United States, serving under James Madison.
gmoke says
Robert McChesney and John Nichols were at Harvard on 10/1/13 to talk about their book, Dollarocracy, and brought up the point about gerrymandering. They said in the Q and A that an end to gerrymandering was one of the solutions to the crisis of electoral democracy we now face, although it didn’t come up in their scheduled remarks nor was it emphasized in the rest of the discussion.
Today, there are only 17 Congressional districts which have Repug reps where Obama won the majority of votes. In 1995, there were, if memory serves, over 80 with Repug Reps but carried by Clinton. Gerrymandering has allowed the Repugs to hold the House with something like 2 million less cumulative votes than the Dims.
Yet, all the reform efforts I’ve seen have been about Citizens United and dark money and soft money – money, money, money. Focusing exclusively on the money doesn’t get us very far, as those of us who remember the campaign finance reform movement of a decade ago can believe.
kbusch says
Even with congressional districts along somewhat natural geographic boundaries, there are still a lot of places where Democrats are highly concentrated, e.g. cities. (Wasn’t there a precinct in New York in which Romney won no votes at all?) Just in Massachusetts, Cambridge and Provincetown show something like 85%-15% or better advantages to Democrats. There is no town anywhere near as Republican.