What are the news commentators talking about?
Redistricting
occurs constantly. Since the population densities of regions vary, legislative
bodies have reasons to redistrict. As long as the United States has political
parties and as long as people move, gerrymandering, which is the process of
shifting boundaries not for the convenience of the citizens but to maximize the
strength of whichever political party can get away with it.
In the early
1800’s Eldridge Gerry, the governor of Massachusetts, presided over a
redistricting that made the electoral lines on the state’s map look silly. An
opponent looked at the map and said a district looked like a salamander.
“No,” someone else
said. “It’s a gerrymander.”
Gerrymander can be
used as a noun, adjective, or verb.
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