On the US Congress and Compromise

[OttoVonBismarck]

Jolly Olde England is where the term actually comes form, and had extreme forms of gerrymandering, rotten boroughs and other such craziness for many years. I imagine the politicians of the time benefited from the status quo. So how did the UK get rid of gerrymandering?

[Admiral Yi]

I'm almost positive it's named after some Massachussets politician named Gerry something or other.

[merithyn]

Jolly Olde England is where the term actually comes form, and had extreme forms of gerrymandering, rotten boroughs and other such craziness for many years. I imagine the politicians of the time benefited from the status quo. So how did the UK get rid of gerrymandering?

Um... no. It's from Boston.

Wiki

[merithyn]

I'm almost positive it's named after some Massachussets politician named Gerry something or other.

Elbridge Gerry

[OttoVonBismarck]

Actually based on my exhaustive 30 second Wikipedia research, it appears the term Gerrymandering actually comes from Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, who used it notoriously while governor of Massachusetts. That being said, while wrong about the name the point stands...it was historically common in other countries like the UK but was done away with. How did those measures get enacted over the objections (presumably) of the people who benefited from them?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Looks like I'm not the only one using Wikipedia today.

[merithyn]

Looks like I'm not the only one using Wikipedia today.

I knew before I checked Wiki, but wanted to provide verification of my memory.

[Admiral Yi]

I've also never heard of gerrymandered boroughs in England. 

[DGuller]

Yeah, so?  How is that nearly as bad as compared to a bunch of politicians getting together and deciding on how much power your vote has?

I'm not sure it is, and I certainly didn't say it is.  But even in the absence of gerrymandering we would still have a large number of safe seats.

Of course, but at least it won't be by design.  And you don't really need to specifically design uncertainty into the seats, you just have to make enough of them responsive to what is actually happening on the ground. 

Sure, urban Congressional seats will always go overwhelmingly to the Democrats, and rural to Republicans.  However, if districts were defined solely by the geographical numbers, there have to be some seats that would fall in the middle, and be sensitive to shifts in public sentiment.

[Razgovory]

Looks like I'm not the only one using Wikipedia today.

Some people actually know stuff.  You are confusing Rotten Boroughs with Gerrymandering.  Rotten Boroughs occur when the legislative districts don't change and you have people who end up representing ghost towns and the like.

[Admiral Yi]

Some people actually know stuff.  You are confusing Rotten Boroughs with Gerrymandering.  Rotten Boroughs occur when the legislative districts don't change and you have people who end up representing ghost towns and the like.

I believe rotten boroughs resulted from large landowners who had the ability to tell the handful of voters in the borough how to vote, because they were all his tenants.

At least that's how it works in the Aubrey and Maturin novels.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I've also never heard of gerrymandered boroughs in England.

Would depend on how you define it. If you mean it in the American sense, where they try to draw borders of equal size but with "desired political outcomes" that would not be the case in British/English history as I don't believe they had any sort of normal process for regularly redistricting, nor was it even thought you needed equally sized districts. That's how rotten boroughs came to be, towns would be given representation and 800 years later would be abandoned so usually a local noble would control the vote by bribing/threatening the 20 or so residents into voting his interests.

But if you define gerrymandering as "drawing of political boundaries to effect political outcomes", then yes, definitely before the Boundary Commission Act the British definitely did that, as it appears did every English speaking former British colony at some point in their history. I understood gerrymandering to be a general term relating to drawing the borders to affect political outcomes, in contravention to "norms" of geography.

[Razgovory]

Some people actually know stuff.  You are confusing Rotten Boroughs with Gerrymandering.  Rotten Boroughs occur when the legislative districts don't change and you have people who end up representing ghost towns and the like.

I believe rotten boroughs resulted from large landowners who had the ability to tell the handful of voters in the borough how to vote, because they were all his tenants.

At least that's how it works in the Aubrey and Maturin novels.

That is the function not the cause.

[Sheilbh]

That being said, while wrong about the name the point stands...it was historically common in other countries like the UK but was done away with. How did those measures get enacted over the objections (presumably) of the people who benefited from them?

Nothing similar actually. The problem in the UK wasn't that politicians would create new seats or redistrict them but that we had ancient constituencies - virtually unchanged for centuries - which didn't reflect population changes and, especially with a restricted franchise, were often in the gift of individuals. Also, I think, the counties had two MPs and so did the historic boroughs.

So the issue wasn't gerrymandering but pocket boroughs and lack of representation. So it was addressed in the Great Reform Act and the Second Reform Act due to popular anger. I think there was also reforms after the First World War that made things like modern constituencies. Apparently the modern system of an independent commission drawing constituency boundaries roughly starts with reforms during the Second World War - so a time of consensual, technocratic politics. Though it's since been reformed.

It's probably significant that boundaries before then were set, I believe, by the Commons not by each county - so the urban and reformist interest could outvote those who gained from it which probably wouldn't be the case if, say, Old Sarum had to be abolished by Wiltshire.

[Sheilbh]

I believe rotten boroughs resulted from large landowners who had the ability to tell the handful of voters in the borough how to vote, because they were all his tenants.

That's a pocket borough. A rotten borough is roughly what Raz described, like Old Sarum a 12th century constituency that by the time of the Great Reform Act was a set of ruins and fields that had 11 electors - all of whom were landowners who lived elsewhere.