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The term gerrymander was used for the initial time in the Boston Gazette. The word was invented to redraw Massachusetts state senate election districts under Governor Elbridge Gerry. In 1812, Elbridge Gerry signed a law that redistricted Massachusetts to help his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the twisted communities in the Boston area resembled the form of a mythological salamander.
Nowadays, using twisted districts even can be created font.
“Ugly Gerry” is a font created by gerrymandered congressional districts
“Cracking” means dividing voters between many districts to deny them a sufficiently large voting bloc in any particular neighborhood.
“Packing” is to gather as many voters of one type into a single electoral district to diminish their power in other communities.
“Hijacking” redraws two districts in such a way as to force two officials to run opposite each other in one district, guaranteeing that one of them will be rejected.
“Kidnapping” moves an incumbent’s house address into another neighborhood.
Software developer Brian Olson wrote a program to draw “optimally compact” equal-population congressional districts in each U.S. state, based on census data. Olson’s algorithm represents districts that respect census blocks’ borders, which are the smallest geographic units used by the Census Bureau. It guarantees that the district borders show actual neighborhoods and don’t, say, cut an arbitrary line through somebody’s residence.
