As Texas Republicans try to muscle a rare mid-decade redistricting bill through the Legislature to help Republicans gain seats in Congress – at President Donald Trump’s request – residents in Austin, the state capital, could find themselves sharing a district with rural Texans more than 300 miles away.
The proposed map chops up Central Texas’ 37th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett, will be consumed by four neighboring districts, three of which Republicans now hold.
One of those portions of the Austin-area district was drawn to be part of the 11th District that Republican Rep. August Pfluger represents, which stretches into rural Ector County, about 20 miles away from the New Mexico border.
The American system adopted it from across the pond. Rotten and pocket burroughs were frequent in the 18th century and actually started getting outlawed in the 19th century right when the Jeffersonian republicans went hard with it.
The Jeffersonian republican/democratic republican is the father of both major parties, it split into the northern republicans (anti- slavery) and southern democrats (mostly pro-slavery).
Neither of those parties resemble the modern parties, which flipped ideologies during the Civil Rights Movement, among their most recent changes.
So, it would be safer to say that American gerrymandering was created by the precursor to both modern parties.