The slippery slope that is gerrymandering

Glenmore House was always far from the contentious Orange Day parades, so it’s hard to imagine that this peaceful corner of North Mayo was once home to a Unionist MP in Westminster. The old mansion once belonged to Godfrey Fetherstonhaugh, a distinguished lawyer, King’s Counsel on the Connaught Circuit, landlord of the Glenmore estate and aforementioned politician.

Between 1906 and 1916, Fetherstonhaugh served as MP for North Fermanagh, though he never lived there. The constituency was a solid Unionist stronghold deep in Ulster and he had little connection to it beyond friendship with its political leader, Sir Edward Carson, who persuaded him to stand for the 'safe' seat which always returned a unionist MP. The landlord thus became a political representative of a county he barely knew.

A mild man in an age of militancy, Fetherstonhaugh was no rabble-rouser. He believed in the constitutional link with Britain and the rule of law. But as Nationalist–Unionist tensions escalated before World War I, and the Orange Order grew militant in opposing Irish Home Rule, his moderation became a liability.

His barbed letters to the Western People mocked local Nationalist politicians as “splendid patriots” while neglecting Mayo roads - with gleeful sarcasm - while he pressed in Parliament for a new pier at Ballycastle, championing North Mayo’s interests, when really he should have been more concerned with voters in North Fermanagh. The Western People rebuked his attacks on “Rome Rule”, noting the irony of a Fermanagh MP man living contentedly among “the kindly, forgiving, tolerant people of Catholic Mayo”.

When sectarian violence erupted in Belfast, Fetherstonhaugh condemned “cowardly gangs” attacking Catholics - a stance that alienated hardline Unionists. Increasingly unwelcome in his own constituency, he stepped aside before the next election, becoming politically homeless: too Unionist for Mayo, too liberal for Fermanagh and too honest for both.

Representation without roots - on both sides

This habit of distant representation wasn’t confined to Unionists. The Home Rule Party also parachuted outsiders into constituencies. A contemporary of Fetherstonhaugh, Daniel Boyle represented North Mayo from 1910-1918 while a Liverpool alderman, with no personal link to the county he served.

His detachment became ammunition for Sinn Féin activists who accused him of being effectively a foreign politician representing Mayo by correspondence - and doing it badly.

Whether Fetherstonhaugh in North Fermanagh or Boyle in North Mayo, the pattern was the same: returning MPs to parliament with no connection to the constituency they represented was only possible in 'safe' seats, especially in a first-past-the-post election system.

From absentee MPs to engineered majorities 

But if such ‘safe’ constituencies were largely more by accident than design in pre-independence Ireland, the Unionist party in newly created Northern Ireland soon made sure they built a perpetually ‘safe’ majority, perfecting more systematic control: gerrymandering.

The American term 'gerrymandering' is a combination of the name of an 1812 redistricting plan and the word "salamander". Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry approved a state senate redistricting map that was so oddly shaped, a political cartoonist dubbed one of the contorted districts a "Gerry-mander" or "salamander" and the name stuck. This strategic corruption of popular democracy did not remain in the States however.

Northern Ireland Unionists scrapped proportional representation and returned to the first-past-the-post system, guaranteeing majorities where none naturally existed. Electoral boundaries were drawn to pack Catholic voters into a few districts and spread Protestant votes thinly for maximum effect. Only ratepayers - property owners and their spouses - could vote locally, while business owners (mostly Protestant) enjoyed multiple votes.

This deliberate architecture of bias eventually sparked the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, whose slogan “One man, one vote” challenged Northern Ireland’s rotten democracy. They drew direct inspiration from the tactics and ideals of the United States Civil Rights movement. Key similarities included demands for voting equality, fair housing allocation and especially an end to discriminatory practices like gerrymandering.

A modern echo: America’s redistricting arms race 

Back across the Atlantic, a similar story again unfolds. Thanks to the Civil Rights movement, racial gerrymandering (drawing districts to dilute the voting power of racial or ethnic minorities) has been illegal under the United States Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but recently, redistricting which happens to dilute political minorities is both legal and on the rise.

Maps are ordinarily redrawn every 10 years after the census. While, both Democrats and Republicans redraw voting districts to gain advantage, the balance tilts toward Republicans, especially in Texas where lawmakers, prodded by Donald Trump, recently launched an extraordinary mid-cycle bid to [further] gerrymander Texas' map, notionally handing themselves up to five extra seats in congress. The effect, critics say, is to weaken minority representation and ensure long-term Republican dominance.

In response, California, long proud of its independent redistricting system, is now poised to break its own rules. Proposition 50, on the November 2025 ballot, would let Democrats gerrymander California’s congressional map to offset Texas’s partisan advantage.

Governor Gavin Newsom made no effort to disguise the motive, announcing “We will fight fire with fire”, while launching a “defensive measure to protect American democracy”. He added that in California: "We're not fighting with one hand tied behind our back." The ‘Yes’ campaign's official website baldly warns: "If Californians don't pass Prop 50 on November 4th, Donald Trump will rig the 2026 election and steal control of Congress."

The rhetoric may be fiery, but the consequence is chilling. Once both sides embrace the logic of manipulation, every state becomes a battlefield, every line on the map a political trench. The United States now finds itself in a redistricting arms race and public trust is the first casualty.

Other states have joined in redistricting efforts including Republican dominated Missouri, North Carolina, Utah, Indiana, Kansas and Ohio. Meanwhile Democrats pursue modifications to electoral maps in Maryland, New York, Illinois and Virginia. This mid-decade redistricting surge is driven by political parties aiming for advantages in the 2026 midterm elections.

While Prop 50 will surely pass, most Americans see gerrymandering as a major threat to democracy. Some 55% oppose partisan redistricting, a recent poll shows and 57% fear democracy is in danger. Yet the Supreme Court refuses to intervene, declaring only state legislatures can fix constituency boundaries - meaning the very foxes are not just guarding the henhouse, but in charge of deciding how the door is fixed and where to put the handle.

The United States is long proud of being the greatest democracy in the world. But the last decade has greatly eroded that reputation - where a two-party state oversees a democracy with an increasing number of ‘safe’ electoral seats and the escalation of the old gerrymandering instinct to dilute the voting power of the minority party in local, state and federal elections.

Godfrey Fetherstonhaugh’s political career was shaped by those who drew the boundaries, not by those he represented. Over a century later, Texas and California politicians are redrawing their own electoral boundaries - and in doing so, dangerously redrawing the limits of democracy itself.

Gerrymandering, whether in Fermanagh, Mayo, Texas or California, breeds cynicism. At a time when trust in politics is at an all-time low, it produces more politicians who serve parties, not places - landlords of politics rather than neighbours of the people. It should be remembered that it did not end well in Ireland for those that embraced it, for whatever reason.