The Struggle for a Fair Count
A biting 1892 editorial captures the intense partisan fury over gerrymandering and the systematic suppression of voters, drawing parallels between the American South and New York’s political machines.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Florida Republicans in their recent state convention decided not to nominate any tickets, state, congressional or national, and in explanation of this decision recite in their platform the outrages inflicted upon Republican voters, the complete denial of their political rights and the inability of the government to give them any protection. What the Democratic party has done in Florida it has done all over the South; it has nullified the voice of 7,000,000 people and assumed their political power as ruthlessly as a thief might vote on stolen stock and forged proxies at a stockholders' meeting. The white population of South Carolina entitles it to three representatives in Congress, while its colored population entitles it to four more representatives. The white Democracy suppress the colored vote absolutely and elect the entire congressional delegation of seven, so that one white Democratic voter in South Carolina counts for more than twice as much influence in making federal laws for the whole country and in the election of president as any voter in Washington. The Southern Democracy have stolen and occupied forty seats in Congress and by virtue of this theft control the present House of Representatives for 'free trade' and for free silver. The Northern Democracy has become an apt pupil of this robber-clan Southern Democracy; for David B. Hill and Tammany Hall have recently stolen the New York legislature, and elevated one of the thieves to the highest judicial tribunal of the Empire State. Gerrymandering a state is a political crime of which both parties have been guilty; the only difference between the parties is one of degree; the Democrats have been guilty of more crimes of this sort than the Republicans and have enforced their legislative opportunities for outrage to a grosser extent.
“A state is really gerrymandered when the vote clearly shows that the party making the arrangement tried to group into a few districts counties that gave majorities for its opponents and to distribute counties containing a majority of its own votes among as many districts as possible.”
While the specific partisan actors have shifted over the last 130 years, the editorial's frustration with 'gerrymandering' and the manipulation of district lines to dilute the voting power of minority populations remains a persistent and explosive issue in modern American civic life.
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