How did “gerrymandering” get that crazy name?
In the year 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a bill that drew district lines to favor his party, the Democratic-Republicans. One of the districts had a long, skinny, contorted look that some thought bore a resemblance to a salamander. One of the local newspapers, the Boston Centinel, printed a political cartoon drawn by Elkanah Tisdale. In that cartoon, the artist caricatured the district as a dragon-like creature, playing up its lizard-like appearance. That cartoon was later taken up by the Boston Gazette, in which the district was referred to by a portmanteau combining Governor Gerry’s name with that of a salamander, creating the word gerrymander.
Since then, the act of creating a voting district designed to favor the people creating it has been turned into the verb gerrymandering.
