{"id":342,"date":"2026-06-04T18:48:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T18:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=342"},"modified":"2026-06-04T18:48:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T18:48:28","slug":"welcome-to-the-golden-age-of-gerrymandering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=342","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Golden Age of Gerrymandering"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through <\/em>The Atlantic\u2019s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Name Is Disappearing From More Than Just the Kennedy Center<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Not long after the original gerrymander took its monstrous shape in 1812, The United States Gazette<\/i> issued a harsh prophecy. Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry might otherwise have been forgotten to history but for the wicked practice that would come to bear his name. According to the paper, gerrymandering<\/i>, \u201clike the word mammoth, will probably be familiarly understood long after the filthy beast to which it is applied, shall become extinct.\u201d<\/p>\n

As political predictions go, it was a good one. In 2026, the political map is crawling with newborn filthy beasts. Last year, at the direction of President Trump, the Texas state legislature gerrymandered its districts to give Republicans an edge in the House elections. More red states followed suit, triggering redrawn maps in blue states. In April, the Supreme Court\u2019s Callais<\/i> decision to block a majority-Black district in Louisiana effectively ended the Voting Rights Act\u2019s requirement for majority-minority districts, opening the door to further gerrymanders across the country.<\/p>\n

We are entering gerrymandering\u2019s golden age. The situation is extreme, but it\u2019s not exactly new. Gerrymandering and other forms of skullduggery\u2014\u201call the frauds and tricks that go to make up the worst form of practical politics,\u201d as John Bach McMaster put it in an 1895 Atlantic<\/i> essay\u2014are as old as the Republic. No sooner had James Madison helped see through the ratification of the Constitution than his fellow Virginian Patrick Henry tried to district him out of a congressional seat. In other instances, Americans have repeatedly tried to solve problems of representation through districting, but reforms meant to curb unfairness have created new opportunities for manipulation. We\u2019ve become so accustomed to thinking about the district as the core form of representation that we have difficulty imagining any alternative.<\/p>\n

One looks mostly in vain for some halcyon era of fair play and good will in the apportionment of representation in the United States. Although the particulars have changed through time, the broad narrative has been mostly the same: One party dilutes another party\u2019s electoral strength\u00a0 either through clever districting or by refusing to create new districts, and tilts the board in its favor. The losers are shocked at the injustice; the winners explain why their actions are virtuous and necessary, or they just shrug. But what remains certain is that yesterday\u2019s victims of gerrymandering will just as readily become the gerrymanderers of today.<\/p>\n

In 1842, the Whig Party\u2019s Apportionment Act mandated geographically contiguous, single-member districts. The measure was meant to eliminate the so-called general-ticket system, which allowed a majority party to take a state\u2019s entire congressional delegation. It was also, the Whigs hoped, a way to maintain power, because the states using the general ticket leaned toward their Democratic opponents. Changing systems didn\u2019t help the Whigs much, but it did lay the groundwork for future outbursts of gerrymandering.<\/p>\n

What appeared to be a long period of d\u00e9tente in the gerrymandering wars\u2014from the early 20th century to the 1960s\u2014happened only because gerrymandering wasn\u2019t necessary: Things were unfair enough without it. In the Jim Crow\u2013era South, where most Black Americans couldn\u2019t vote and Democratic rule was mostly a given, there was little pressure to redraw maps. Many states in other regions also froze their maps; representatives from rural and small-town districts had little incentive to surrender their advantage as populations shifted toward cities and suburbs. The resulting imbalances were astonishing. By the early \u201960s, a House district in Atlanta contained more than 820,000 people, and a rural district in the same state sent a representative to Congress on behalf of fewer than 275,000 people.<\/p>\n

Read more Maine Has a Graham Platner Problem<\/a><\/p>\n

A series of Supreme Court decisions, along with civil-rights legislation in the \u201960s, entrenched modern districting. Most important, the 1964 Wesberry<\/i> decision mandated that states maintain congressional districts of approximately equal population to ensure the principle of \u201cone person, one vote.\u201d To abide by the ruling, states generally adopted the practice of redistricting after a census\u2014once every decade\u2014to keep the required balance. When southern states threatened to return to the general-ticket system, which could dilute the voting power of newly enfranchised Black citizens, Congress again passed legislation mandating single-member districts. In some states, independent districting commissions helped limit extreme gerrymandering, and the Voting Rights Act curtailed efforts to dilute Black political representation in the South.<\/p>\n

But the conditions for abuse were in place. By the beginning of the 21st century, advanced computer modeling had lent neighborhood-level precision to partisan districting efforts. Add to that polarization, the dismantling of some fair districting commissions, and more Supreme Court decisions allowing gerrymandered maps to stand, and we\u2019ve reached a new breaking point.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we should stop trying to solve the problem of districting with districting. This was the case that a little-known writer named Stoughton Cooley made in a pair of 1892 Atlantic <\/i>essays. Working in a moment of corruption and cynicism similar to ours, Cooley had watched Ohio be \u201cgerrymandered and re-gerrymandered, and gerrymandered again\u201d (six times from 1878 to 1892); he noted the long-standing issue of single-party rule in states such as Kansas. In \u201cLegal Disfranchisement,\u201d he unraveled the ways in which districting doesn\u2019t just make for unfair representation but also corrodes the entire political culture. Voters in minority parties give up on the political process altogether, and political leaders become aligned with the narrow interests of their parties rather than the people. \u201cA premium is put upon mediocrity; a reward is offered for dishonesty,\u201d Cooley wrote.<\/p>\n

If his diagnosis of the problem is hauntingly familiar, his solution is perhaps less so. In \u201cThe Slaying of the Gerrymander,\u201d Cooley argued for a system of proportional representation that would eliminate districts altogether; parties would receive seats according to their share of the statewide vote. The result, he argued, would be something that looked like real representative government, defined by a genuine contest of ideas and energized by broader participation.<\/p>\n

With as few as 18 true toss-up House seats in the coming midterms, it might be worth hearing Cooley\u2019s lonely shout from the Gilded Age. Proportional systems have their drawbacks, but as we\u2019re seeing now\u2014and as we\u2019ve seen from the beginning\u2014districting can erode democracy. Elbridge Gerry\u2019s legacy has survived long enough.<\/p>\n

Read more The Iran War Isn\u2019t Only Trump\u2019s to End<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And all the mutually assured destruction that it bears<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-time-travel-thursdays"],"yoast_head":"\nWelcome to the Golden Age of Gerrymandering - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=342\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Welcome to the Golden Age of Gerrymandering - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"And all the mutually assured destruction that it bears\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=342\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-04T18:48:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=342#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=342\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"Welcome to the Golden Age of Gerrymandering\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-04T18:48:28+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=342\"},\"wordCount\":1096,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=342#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/dde934c98db589eda384e21366d01763.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Time-Travel Thursdays\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=342#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=342\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=342\",\"name\":\"Welcome to the Golden Age of Gerrymandering - 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