“At-Large” voting presents an early challenge to the Founding
​Fathers’ vision of district-based proportional representation.

Some states employ “at-large” general ticket elections to manipulate the composition of congressional delegations.
By circumventing district-based contests, these winner-take-all statewide elections make it ​easier for
​one party to dominate the delegation.  By 1842, nearly a quarter of all states are still using this model.

U.S. congressional district map as of 1842. States that use at-large contests are ​shown
just by their state boundaries, without any intrastate district lines.
(UCLA District ShapeFiles).

“Gerrymandering" emerges as a dangerous tool
​for manipulating​ district-based contests.

State legislators discover that they can draw district lines in a way that favors a particular political party.  
​This practice, in which politicians are essentially “choosing” their voters by manipulating district boundaries, is called “gerrymandering.” It allows a party to win a majority of legislative seats without winning a majority of the people’s vote.

This 1812 political cartoon in the Boston Gazette criticized the peculiar design of an Essex County legislative district in Massachusetts,
which Governor Elbridge Gerry had authorized in an attempt to secure political advantage for his Democratic-Republican party.
(Getty Images, 1900).

“[Boston Gazette editor Benjamin Russell] hung the [Essex district] map on the wall of his editorial closet.  One day Gilbert Stuart, the celebrated painter, looked at the map, and said the towns… formed a picture resembling some monstrous animal.  He took a pencil and added what might be supposed to represent claws. ‘There,’ said Stuart, ‘that will do for a Salamander.’  Russell exclaimed, ‘Salamander!  Call it a Gerrymander.’”

​- Historian John Ward Dean, describing why Benjamin Russell is often credited with coining the term “gerrymander.”  (“The Gerrymander” published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 26, Jan 1892.)

The Federalist-leaning Salem Gazette ran this map of the Essex gerrymander
on the eve of the 1813 elections, in an effort to turn out the vote and
counter the advantage Governor Gerry’s party had secured the prior year.
(See excerpt from editorial at right.) (Boston Gazette, 1813).

“This Law inflicted a grievous wound on the Constitution – it in fact subverts and changes our Form of Government, which ceases to be Republican as long as an Aristocratic House of Lords under the form of a Senate tyrannizes over the People, and silences and stifles the voice of the Majority.”

​- The Gerry-Mander, or Essex South District Formed into a Monster!, Salem Gazette, Apr. 2, 1813

How Gerrymandering Works

Excerpt from "Gerrymandering, Explained."  (Washington Post, 2018).

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This graphic illustrates the gerrymandering technique of “packing,” where opposition
voters are crammed into just a few districts, limiting the legislative seats they win.
(Azavea, 2018).

This graphic illustrates the technique of “cracking,” where opposition voters are
spread thinly across many districts so they can’t gain a majority in any one of them.
(Azavea, 2018).

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The Convention

Cracks Into Chasms