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The term gerrymandering is a portmanteau of a salamander and Elbridge Gerry, [a] [5] Vice President of the United States at the time of his death, who, as governor of Massachusetts in 1812, signed a bill that created a partisan district in the Boston area that was compared to the shape of a mythological salamander. The term has negative ...
The term "gerrymandering" was coined after a review of Massachusetts's redistricting maps of 1812 set by Governor Elbridge Gerry noted that one of the districts looked like a mythical salamander. In the United States, redistricting takes place in each state about every ten years, after the decennial census.
US congressional districts change every 10 years after the US Census finishes its work (hence the action taking place in 1812). The governor at the time was named Gerry and eventually, the animal in this cartoon (a dragon) was likened to a salamander, giving way to the term Gerrymandering. The term is still in common use in the American ...
The term came from a salamander-like district signed into law by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812. What is packing in gerrymandering? There are lots of ways to gerrymander.
Elbridge Gerry (/ ˈ ɡ ɛr i / GHERR-ee; July 17, 1744 – November 23, 1814) was an American Founding Father, merchant, politician, and diplomat who served as the fifth vice president of the United States under President James Madison from 1813 until his death in 1814. [1]
Today, the term "special interest" has often been equated with Madison's sense of "faction". In addition, the Constitution sought to protect other freedoms, such as free speech. Accordingly, some believe the ability of individuals, groups, and corporations to lobby the government is protected by the right to petition [3] in the First Amendment.
The old gerrymandering had a very bad stench and is still practiced in many states including Texas, columnist George Skelton writes. Column: Gerrymandering still exists in California. But reforms ...
The efficiency gap was first devised by University of Chicago law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos and political scientist Eric McGhee in 2014. [3] The metric has notably been used to quantitatively assess the effect of gerrymandering, the assigning of voters to electoral districts in such a way as to increase the number of districts won by one political party at the expense of another.