elbridge gerry's salamander

The word gerrymander describes a distinctively (albeit not uniquely) American practice, that of redrawing district lines to achieve partisan (or other) advantage. The word also has a distinctively American etymology, dating back to Elbridge Gerry's term as governor of Massachusetts (1810–1812), when political observers made sport of a district drawn by his party that looked something like a salamander.

At the broadest level, indicated by its title, this book is about gerrymandering. The principles of our analysis could be applied to the original Gerry-mander or to any of its various and long line of descendants (for one such effort, see Engstrom 2001).

At a narrower and more specific level, indicated by its subtitle, this book concerns what was arguably the most important change in the practice of American gerrymandering since its invention. Whereas previously the game of drawing salamanders with district lines was limited to legislators and governors, the courts standing scrupulously aside, after 1964 the rules changed. A new process emerged, with new strategic consequences and nuances. We examine how these procedural changes help explain two of the biggest stories in congressional elections since the 1960s: the seemingly invulnerable Democratic majority in the House of Representatives before 1994 and the seemingly unfair and bloated advantage of incumbents over challengers.

the reapportionment revolution

The Supreme Court's reapportionment decisions, beginning with Baker v. Carr in 1962, were soon hailed by legal scholars as revolutionary (see, e.g., Baker 1966, p. 3; Dixon 1968, p. 99). They reversed decades of court decisions that had consistently held that the drawing of legislative district lines, fraught though it was with malapportionment and gerrymandering, was not justiciable.