Gerrymander, the art of drawing voting district lines to favor your own party and disadvantage the opposition party. After the election, the losing party always blames a gerrymander. We have to have voting districts, otherwise everyone runs at large. Which is difficult and expensive, the candidate has to run ads, make campaign appearances, and put up yard signs all over the state, rather than just his own district. To gerrymander, you arrange the voting districts either to pack the opposition voters into a few districts which you cede to the them, or to dilute the opposition voters among your strong districts, where they never have the numbers to win the district. Elbridge Gerry, a serious Massachusetts politician, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was governor of Massachusetts after the Revolution when redistricting created an odd shaped district, long and wiggly and looking like a salamander. It was dubbed a Gerrymander, and the term has stayed in American politics ever since.
Trouble is, gerrymandering is hard to define, and thus hard to legislate against. So far all we have tried is the appointment of a "non partisan" commission to draw district lines. Such commissions are better than nothing, but not all that effective.
What we might try is a law that requires districts to be reasonable compact. Define "reasonable compact" as the longest way across the district may not exceed twice the shortest way across the district. That would outlaw the long and skinny districts.
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