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Gerrymander

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"The Gerry-mander" first appeared in this cartoon-map in the Boston Gazette, 26 March 1812.

Gerrymandering is a form of redistricting in which electoral district or constituency boundaries are manipulated for electoral advantage. Gerrymandering may be used to help or hinder particular constituents, such as members of a racial, linguistic, religious or class group. It is used most often in favor of ruling incumbents[1] or a specific political party. Societies whose government uses a single-winner voting systems are the most likely to have political parties that gerrymander for advantage. Most notably, gerrymandering is particularly effective in nonproportional systems that tend towards fewer parties, such as first past the post.

Most democracies have partly proportional electoral systems, where several political parties are proportionally represented in the national parliaments, in proportion to the total numbers of votes of the parties in the regional or national elections. In these more or less proportional representation systems, gerrymandering has little or less significance.

Some nations, such as the UK and Canada, authorize non-partisan organisations to set constituency boundaries to prevent gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is most common in countries where elected state politicians are responsible for defining districts. They have obvious self interest in determining boundaries to their and their party's interest. The United States of America is an example of such a system.

Printed in 1812, this political cartoon illustrates the electoral districts drawn by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the incumbent Democratic-Republican party candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists, from which the term gerrymander is derived. The cartoon depicts the bizarre shape of a district in Essex County, Massachusetts as a dragon. Arizona's 2nd congressional district.

Gerrymandering should not be confused with malapportionment, whereby the number of eligible voters per elected representative can vary widely. Nevertheless the ~mander suffix has been applied to particular malapportionments, such as the "Playmander" in South Australia and the "Bjelkemander" in Queensland. Sometimes political representatives use both gerrymandering and malapportionment to try to maintain power.

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