In my last article I explained how Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker got absolutely burned for being one of three Democrat held governors to take in Texas House Democrats on the lam from to avoid a vote on a state redistricting map for voting purposes.

“IL Gov. Pritzker Homes TX House Dems, Gets Torched!” – The Thinking Conservative

Followers who read that article said they understood how Democrats are scoundrels who rig and steal elections from Republicans but they still do not understand how the concept of gerrymandering works. This article should help clarify that and a very informative short video is included by “Map Men” for those who are more visual learners.

The concept of gerrymandering came with Elbridge Gerry, the eighth governor of Massachusetts, when he realized he was about to lose reelection to another term. The term, originally was written as “Gerry-mander,” on March 26, 1812, in the Boston Gazette newspaper. It was the paper’s reaction to the redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under Gov. Elbridge Gerry.

The redistricting was done at the behest of his Democratic-Republican Party and was not his idea. He had a pretty good idea he was going to lose in the next election. As a matter of fact, he was not even sure the irregularly drawn map idea would work for his party. Still, it was Gerry who signed the bill in 1812 and as a result he received the dubious honor of attribution to this new term, along with its negative connotations. Gerry, in fact, found the concept “highly disagreeable.” He did indeed go on to lose his next election, but the redistricting did allow his party to retain control of the legislature over the Federalist’s Party.

The story goes that one of the remapped, contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a salamander and that is how “Gerry-mander” became “Gerrymandering”. The person who coined this phrase was never identified. But the artist who drew the political cartoon to inspire the term, was Elkanah Tisdale, a Boston-based artist and engraver who had the skills to cut the wood blocks for the original cartoon depicting a salamander like creature.

Gerry was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, a two-term member of the House of Representatives, governor of Massachusetts, and U.S. vice president under James Madison. But despite all of these remarkable accomplishments his name will forever be tied to this form of political power brokering termed gerrymandering.

There are generally four ways politicians gerrymander maps to the advantage of some voters and disadvantage to others:

Malapportionment – drawing districts with deliberate differences in population causing constituents in highly populous districts to have effectively less voting strength than their counterpart voters in more sparsely populated districts drawn to advantage voters of party or race as the map drawers.

Racial voting dilution –redistricting plans that minimize or cancel the voting strength of minority voters by race.

Partisan gerrymandering – creating political maps that enable a political party to gain a systemic advantage for itself.

Racial Gerrymandering – sorting voters into districts with a predominant focus on one race. The U.S. Supreme Court has found that an excessive focus on race in drawing districts offends the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution unless there is sufficient justification, such as compliance with the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965.

The two most common methods to achieve these ends are termed cracking and packing.

Cracking involves dividing a group’s supporters among multiple districts so that they fall short of a full majority in each district. Packing is the opposite practice of concentrating a group’s support heavily in few districts so a group wins significantly fewer districts than it would have had its supporters been spread out more evenly.

CONCLUSION:

As mentioned in my last article calling out the hypocrisy and idiocy of J.B. Pritzker and his fellow Democrats in this matter of gerrymandering state voting maps, I think this is one of the few things America does wrong. It is a clearly identified problem begging a solution. 

There are two possible solutions. One is easy and one is hard.

The easy one is I believe the Republican Party has done an incredibly poor job of educating the general public about the truths of the Democratic Party of America in public relations. Here are two truths both old and new:

Old – the Democratic Party has a history of racism far more so than the Republican Party and this history is well documented in vote counts of bills and laws passed in Congress by party line.

New – the Democratic Party is no longer the party of progressive liberalism but rather out in the open socialism and this is not the same party of our forefathers.

The hard one would be to outlaw district voting maps based on last census counts and determine another way the states would get a certain number of Electoral College Delegates and House Representatives. I mentioned in my last article I like the idea of using county lines where they remain unchanged and their populations change little by party as well.  

More and more people of all backgrounds are leaving the Democratic Party and the socialists who have now taken over that party are the reason why. To be an American means you believe in concepts of independence and freedom as well as the overall concept of right over wrong. Mostly, you believe in God’s truths over evil’s lies.

People who announce truths are acting selflessly for no personal gain.

People who abound lies are acting selfishly to push an agenda.  

© 2025 by Mark S. Schwendau