Perhaps a good place to start considering gerrymandering is to take a closer look at Elbridge Gerry, signer of the Declaration of Independence, a member of Congress, Massachusetts governor and fifth vice president of the United States. Born in 1744, he was an outspoken critic of British colonial rule in his twenties. Later, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, he refused to sign the document, voting no because it lacked a bill of rights. Elected to the first United States Congress, he partnered with James Madison in 1787 to create the initial 10 amendments to the Constitution, which have passed down to us as our Bill of Rights. Gerry also served as a diplomat to France both before and after the ascension of Napoleon, making a friend of Grand Chamberlain Talleyrand. He sounds like just the kind of fully engaged citizen democracy requires.

Ironically, for two centuries his name has been linked with a legislative redistricting practice generally acknowledged as borderline unethical and corrosive to electoral fairness. He was not the villain of this scheme, however. Serving as governor in 1810, he merely signed the Democratic-Republican maps approved by the Massachusetts Legislature. Districts were crafted to make campaign success difficult for Federalist candidates. A cartoonist and an editor at the Boston Gazette poked fun at the most egregious of these districts encompassing portions of Essex County while excluding others — labelled a Gerrymander for its salamander-like boundaries. Alas, history has not permitted the Honorable Elbridge Gerry to wriggle away from this namesake.

Though not technically illegal, nor even contemplated in the Constitution, the manipulation of legislative redistricting for partisan advantage has been a recurrent political irritant with a lengthy record of judicial appeals for relief. In a number of western states that entered the union during the late 19th century, progressive-era provisions in their constitutions specifically prohibit the practice. A century later, a number of Democratic states, including Colorado, have adopted independent citizen-led commissions to draw post-census boundaries, usually imposing strictures including population variance, geographic compactness, communities of interest, incumbency and the integrity of municipal boundaries.

Extreme Gerrymandering is usually only possible when a majority party holds an overwhelming dominance. At the close of the 20th century, Colorado relied on an appointed redistricting/reapportionment board appointed by the governor and legislative leaders. Congressional redistricting was retained as a legislative prerogative, which usually resulted in legal challenges resulting in judicially drawn maps. After the 1970 and 1980 census results became available, the legislative redistricting committee was chaired by a shrewd Republican political operative. Bob Lee, a nationally experienced campaign manager, struck an informal agreement with Democrats Wellington Webb and Ruben Valdez, allowing them to slice up Democratic strongholds anyway they wished (Denver, Boulder, Adams and Pueblo counties). In exchange, he received carte blanche to redistrict the remainder of the state as he saw fit. Lee successfully cemented Republican majorities in both chambers for a quarter century.

Colorado had its own unique “Jerrymander”, however, named for long serving Park Hill representative Jerry Kopel. He and his wife Dolores managed Bar Exam training classes each year for aspiring lawyers. Kopel also served as the legislature’s watchdog on compatibility between newly adopted laws and existing statutes. Not only did he offer conforming amendments to bill sponsors on both sides of the aisle, but at the close of each session he drafted a reconciliation bill to bring all the statutes into conformance with one another. This attention to detail was sufficiently valuable that Jerry’s district was drawn, with bipartisan support, to assure his south Park Hill home was shoe-horned into a heavily Democratic constituency which once required a block-wide panhandle linked to the east-central Denver House seat. None of this social treatment troubled most Denver Democrats. Nonetheless, it was, without a doubt, a Jerrymander.

Until the passage of the voting rights and civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the Supreme Court left redistricting squabbles to the discretion of state legislatures. During the ensuing 60 years, however, racial gerrymandering has received the most attention while partisan gerrymandering continued to receive something of a pass. This included a 2015 decision explicitly approving an Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission as an appropriate exercise of state authority. It was in 2004 the court painted itself into a corner, finding partisan gerrymandering to be “non-justiciable” in federal courts. Its premise was that no uniform standards were available for evaluating political discrimination claims under the 14th Amendment. Anthony Kennedy suggested in his concurring opinion future claims might be brought under the First Amendment. This has never been attempted. The Court’s majority found claims should be excluded under its “political questions doctrine.”

Common sense dictates permitting politicians to choose their voters rather than the reverse undermines the fundamental purposes of democratic governance. While partisan gerrymanders prior to the computer age relied on best guesses, it is now possible to isolate (micro-target) voter preferences from vast databases. Similar to the Supreme Court’s notorious decision regarding pornography, “I know it when I see it,” the same can be said for gerrymandering. When a mere 34 of 435 Congressional seats are judged as truly “swing districts,” there is something desperately skewed about our current system that contributes to our evident polarization.  Little reason to wonder why 30% to 40% of citizens don’t bother to vote. I find myself of the opinion the single reform that could restore trust and faith in American democracy would be a constitutional amendment establishing a redistricting standard that requires the maximum number of competitive districts — perhaps plus or minus 5%.

I feel confident Palantir could produce these maps overnight. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to resolve a longstanding injustice every American could see. Jim Crow laws denied black Americans their right to vote. The recent Callais decision claiming this injustice has vanished is utter nonsense. Isn’t there the slightest shame on the court as we witness former Confederate states rushing to redraw partisan districts that “happen to” eliminate black majority seats? The court has substituted one sin for another. Even in 2004, not a single justice attempted to defend partisan gerrymandering as a good thing. The single positive indicator we continue to perfect our national union is the fact all but 11 of the 46 members of the congressional Black Caucus represent white majority districts. Each time I see Colorado’s Joe Neguse interviewed he makes me proud. How could Colorado do any better?

In his recent book, “Nations Apart”, historian Colin Woodward traces the “clashing regional cultures” currently shattering our political culture to fractious patterns of colonial settlement among competing immigrant populations. Their conflicts have accompanied us on the journey to our present moment. He explains, “Maintaining a shared sense of nationhood has always been a special challenge for the United States, arguably the world’s first civic nation, one defined not by organic ties, but by a shared commitment to a set of ideals.”

Paramount among those ideals is a faith in democracy as the surest guarantor of fairness and freedom for all. Only a rediscovery of this animating principle can provide us with the shared purpose that brings us together again.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.