The Birth of the Gerrymander: When Salamanders Entered Politics

The series begins in 1812 Massachusetts, where Governor Elbridge Gerry's reluctant approval of partisan redistricting created both the term "gerrymander" and a political monster that has plagued American democracy for over two centuries. Alexandra explores the fascinating contradictions of Gerry himself—a founding father who understood the dangers of electoral manipulation yet signed it into law anyway—and traces how a desperate political gambit in a small New England state became the blueprint for nationwide democratic corruption. Through detailed historical analysis and access to original documents, the episode reveals how quickly political norms can erode when partisan advantage is deemed more important than democratic fairness.

Click here to browse handpicked Amazon finds inspired by this podcast series!
https://amzn.to/443frgP

This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm Alexander Reeves, and this is Jerrymanderin. Yes, I'm an AI.
But that's precisely why I can see the maps clearly,
no political allegiances. Whether you're tracking Supreme Court cases or
just wondering why your vote feels smaller than your neighbors.
We're here to trace these boundaries back to their source.

(00:21):
Today's map starts here. Let me take you back to
Massachusetts in February of eighteen twelve. The snow was thick
on the ground in Boston, and the young American Republic
was barely thirty five years old, still figuring out the
basic mechanics of democratic governors. The War of eighteen twelve

(00:42):
was looming on the horizon. Part's intentions were running high,
and in the Massachusetts State House, politicians were discovering that
democracy had a fundamental vulnerability that its founders had never
fully anticipated. The man at the center of our story
is LB Jerry, And if you know anything about him

(01:02):
at all, it's probably only that he lent half his
name to one of democracy's most troublesome offspring. But Jerry
was no mere political hack. He was one of the
founding fathers, a delegate to the Continental Congress, a signer
of the Declaration of Independence, and notably one of only
three delegates to the Constitutional Convention who refused to sign

(01:25):
the Constitution because it lacked a Bill of rights. He
was a principled man, which makes what happened next all
the more fascinating and tragic. By eighteen twelve, Jerry was
serving as the governor of Massachusetts, leading a state where
political battle lines were drawn not just over local issues,
but over fundamental questions about the direction of the young nation.

(01:50):
His Democratic Republican party, aligned with Thomas Jefferson's vision of
an agrarian republic, found itself in fierce competition with the Federalists,
who favored strong central government and closer ties to Britain.
These weren't merely policy disagreements. There were existential battles over
what kind of country America would become. The immediate trigger

(02:12):
for what would become the first Gerrymander was the eighteen
ten census, which had shifted population and required new legislative
district boundaries to be drawn. The Democratic Republicans controlled both
the governor's office and the state legislature, giving them complete
authority over the redistricting process. What they did with that

(02:32):
authority would echo through American politics for the next two
centuries and counting. I've seen the original maps in the
Massachusetts State Archives, and even with my experience covering political
intrigue around the world, I was struck by the audacity
at Jerry's allies accomplished. They didn't just draw districts that

(02:52):
favored their party. They created cartographic monstrosities that stretched the
very concept of representative government to its breaking point. One
district in particular, started in the town of Marblehead, snaked
through several towns along the north shore, and twisted inland
to include communities that had virtually nothing in common except

(03:15):
their tendency to vote Democratic Republican. The Federalist newspapers pounced
on the The federalist newspapers pounced on these bizarre boundaries
almost immediately. The most famous response came from the Boston Gazette,
where editor Benjamin Russell published a map of the most
egregious type district. The Federalist Federal Palace published a map

(03:38):
of the most egregious type. When the paper's political cartoonist
Elcarna Tisdale saw Russell studying the map, he reportedly grabbed
his pen and began sketching. He added claws to one
end of the district, fangs to another, and wings along
the sides. That will do for a salamander, Russell supposedly said,

(04:03):
better say a jerrymander. Tisdale replied, an American political vocabulary
gained its most enduring contribution from the world of mythical creatures.
What strikes me most about this origin story is how
quickly everyone involved understood what had happened. There was no
pretense that these districts made geographic or community sense. The

(04:25):
Democratic Republicans didn't try to claim that their mapping served
some higher democratic purpose. They had discovered that if you
controlled the redistricting process, you could essentially guarantee electoral outcomes
regardless of how people actually voted, and they deployed that
discovery with ruthless efficiency. The results were immediate and dramatic.

(04:47):
In the eighteen twelve elections, Federalist candidates for the state
Senate received more votes statewide than their Democratic Republican opponents,
but the Democrats won twenty nine of the forty Senate seats.
Think about that for a moment. The party that got
fewerfverts won nearly three quarters of the seats. The jerrymander

(05:08):
had worked exactly as designed, allowing politicians to choose their
voters instead of letting voters choose their representatives. But here's
where the story gets complicated, and here's why I find
Elbridge Jerry himself such a fascinating figure. By most accounts,
Jerry was deeply uncomfortable with the redistricting plan his party

(05:28):
had crafted. He reportedly called it highly disagreeable and worried
about the premises violence done to the natural districts. Yet
he signed a bill into law anyway, prioritizing party loyalty
over his personal misgivings about subverting democratic principles. I've covered
enough politicians over the years to recognize this dynamic. Jerry

(05:52):
found himself trapped between his principles and his party, between
his understanding that what they were doing was wrong and
his bil belief that the alternative, letting the Federalists win,
would be worse for the country. It's a rationalization I've
heard countless times in countless countries. We have to manipulate
the system to save it. We have to subvert democracy

(06:14):
to preserve it. We have to break the rules because
our opponents are even worse. The personal cost to Jerry
was substantial. The controversy over jerrymandering contributed to his defeat
in the gubernatorial election later that year, ending his state
political career. But the precedent had been set and the

(06:35):
practice would outlive its reluctant namesake by centuries. Jerry died
in eighteen fourteen while serving as James Madison's vice president,
never living to see how thoroughly his name would become
associated with electoral manipulation. What happened in Massachusetts in eighteen
twelve wasn't just a local political squabble. It was a

(06:58):
proof of concept the politicians across the country quickly recognized
and adopted. Within decades, both major political parties were jerrymandering
districts wherever they had the power to do so. The
practice spread from state to state like a political contagian,
each iteration becoming more sophisticated than the last. By the

(07:20):
eighteen forties, the term gerrymander had entered common American usage,
and the practice itself had become so routine that politicians
barely bothered to defend it any more. What it shocked
observers in eighteen twelve was simply accepted as politics as
usual by mid century. I found newspaper accounts from the

(07:41):
eighteen fifties where editorial writers complained about gerrymandering in their states,
but with a weary resignation that suggested they had given
up hope of stopping it. The Civil War and reconstruction
temporarily disrupted normal political patterns, but jerrymandering roared back with
a vengeance in the late nineteenth century. By then, both

(08:01):
parties had decades of experience in the dark arts of redistricting,
and they deployed that expertise with increasing sophistication. The basic
techniques that would dominate jerrymander for the next century and
a half were all established in this period, packing opposing
voters into a few overwhelmingly safe districts, cracking than by

(08:22):
spreading them across multiple districts where they couldn't form majorities,
and kidnapping popular opposing candidates by redrawing their districts to
include more hostile voters. What amazes me as I trace
this history is how little the fundamental dynamics have changed
since eighteen twelve. The technology has evolved dramatically. Today's map

(08:46):
makers use sophisticated computer algorithms and vast databases of voter
information that would have been unimaginable to Elbridge Jerry's generation,
But the basic game remains exactly the same. Whoever controls
the redistricting process can manipulate electoral outcomes by deciding which
voters belong in which districts. The persistence of gerrymandering across

(09:10):
more than two centuries of American history reveals something profound
about democratic governments. The founders designed an elaborate system of
checks and balances to prevent any single faction from accumulating
too much power, but they largely overlooked the question of
how electoral districts would be drawn. They assumed, perhaps naively,

(09:33):
that representatives would draw fair boundaries that served the common
good rather than partisan advantage. That assumption was shattered in
Massachusetts in eighteen twelve, and it has never been restored.
Every decade since then, when the census requires new district
boundaries to be drawn, the party in power has faced

(09:53):
the same temptation that confronted Jerry and his allies. The
chance to locking electoral advance for the next ten years,
regardless of how voters actually feel about their performance in office.
Some states and some politicians have resisted this temptation over
the years, drawing districts that prioritize geographic compactness, community cohesion,

(10:17):
and competitive elections over parties an advantage, but they have
been the exception rather than the rule. The incentive structure
of American politics rewards jerrymandering and punishes restraint, which is
why the practice has not only survived, but flourished across
two centuries of democratic evolution. The irony is that Elbridge Jerry,

(10:40):
the reluctant father of gerrymandering, understood better than many of
his successes the damage that redestructing manipulation could inflict on
democratic legitimacy. His private letters reveal a man genuinely conflicted
about what his party was doing, someone who recognized that
short term heart as an advantage came at the cost

(11:02):
of long term democratic health. But he lacked either the
political courage or the institutional power to stop the process
he had set in motion. As I've researched the story,
I keep coming back to that moment in February eighteen twelve,
when Jerry sat in the Governor's office with the redistricting
bill on his desk. He knew it was wrong, He

(11:25):
knew it would set a terrible precedent. He knew it
would distort representation and undermine faith in democratic institutions, and
he signed it anyway, because the alternative letting his political
opponents win fair and square seemed worse than corrupting the
system itself. That calculation made in a Boston office more

(11:47):
than two centuries ago, continues to echo through American politics
to day. Every time a legislature draws districts designed to
guarantee partisan outcomes, every time politicians choose theirs instead of
letting voters choose their representatives, every time the democratic process
is subverted in service of partisan advantage, we're seeing the

(12:10):
legacy of that long ago decision playing out in real time.
The salamander that gave its name to gerrymandering was, of
course a mythical creature, a cartoonist's fantastical interpretation of a
distorted political map. But the gerimander itself has proven to
be all too real, a monster that has been feeding

(12:32):
on American democracy for more than two hundred years. Now,
Understanding how it was born is the first step toward
finally slaying it. For more content like this, please go
to Quiet Please dot Ai. That's the origin story of Gerimander,
born from the collision of high political principles and low

(12:53):
partisan tactics in the winter of eighteen twelve. Next time,
we'll explore or how modern technology has transformed Elbridge Jerry's
crude experiment into a precise science that threatens the very
foundations of democratic representation. Thank you for joining me on
this journey through democracy's hidden manipulations. Please subscribe if you

(13:16):
found this valuable, and remember that understanding how power works
is the first step toward holding it accountable. This has
been brought to you by Quiet Please Podcast networks Quiet
Please dot Ai hear what matters