Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Gerrymandering dates back to the Founding Fathers

Gerry's Salamander map of Massachusetts districts

Gerry's Salamander, which led to the term "gerrymandering."

Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”

Most voters would assume that redistricting abuses are new to American politics.

Nope.

In fact, our Founding Fathers were stacking the deck when George Washington was still kicking. James Madison ran in a district designed for him so that he could be elected to Congress in order to be able to introduce the Bill of Rights.


“His friends were saying, ‘James, you have got to come back and campaign in your district because the district that has been drawn for you, as described by one person as having 1,000 eccentric angles,’” explained Sean O'Brien, executive director of the Center for the Constitution at Madison's home, Montpelier.

In fact, the term gerrymander came from another Founding Father, Elbridge Gerry (pronounced with a hard G), who served as governor of Massachusetts (and vice president under Madison).

“One of the offending districts kind of looked like a salamander, and so a newspaper called it Gerry's Salamander, and that became Gary Mander, then Jerry Mander,” says Harvard political scientist Nick Stephanopolus.

The push for modern redistricting reform began with the League of Women Voter in Iowa in the mid-1950s. Iowa is admired for taking the politics out of the process — today technocrats who work for the Legislature draw the maps. But in many ways Iowa is not really a model. The state is a square; the population is 97 percent white and with only four representatives it doesn’t take much careful crafting to draw fair districts.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Today 21 states have adopted variations of the commission model.

“If you look in aggregate, I'm a little bit less concerned with gerrymandering now than I was a decade ago, " says Stephanopolous. “Because in the current cycle it's balanced out more on a nationwide sort of aggregate basis. So, if you look at the House as a whole right now, I don't think it's significantly skewed in either party's favor by gerrymandering.”

As we discovered in our series on election reforms, however, even the reforms can be scammed. Listen to our podcast’s Episode 11, “Tinkering under the Hood of American politics,” to hear a doozy of a scandal in Washington state.

Tinkering around under the hood of American politics by Scott Klug

Reformers kick around ideas to improve American elections

Read on Substack

Read More

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries
person in blue denim jeans and white sneakers standing on gray concrete floor
Photo by Phil Scroggs on Unsplash

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries

With the stroke of a pen, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham enfranchised almost 350,000 independent voters recently by signing a bill for open primaries. Just a few years ago, bills to open the primaries were languishing in the state legislature, as they have historically across the country. But as more and more voters leave both parties and declare their independence, the political system is buckling. And as independents begin to organize and speak out, it’s going to continue to buckle in their direction.

In 2004, there were 120,000 independent voters in New Mexico. A little over 10 years later, when the first open primary bill was introduced, that number had more than doubled. That bill never even got a hearing. But today the number of independents in New Mexico and across the country is too big to ignore. Independents are the largest group of voters in ten states and the second-largest in most others. That’s putting tremendous pressure on a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand Placing Ballot in Box With American Flag
Getty Images, monkeybusinessimages

We Can Fix This: Our Politics Really Can Work – These Stories Show How

As American politics polarizes ever further, voters across the political spectrum agree that our current system is not delivering for the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans feel most elected officials don’t care what people like them think. Eighty-eight percent of them say our political system is broken.

Whether it’s the quality and safety of their kids’ schools, housing affordability and rising homelessness, scarce and pricey healthcare, or any number of other issues that touch Americans’ everyday lives, the lived experience of polarization comes from such problems—and elected officials’ failure to address them.

Keep ReadingShow less