dummymander
noun
a gerrymander that backfires for the party in power
What does dummymander mean?
Dummymander refers to a gerrymander (a district or pattern of districts divided in such a way as to give one political party an unfair advantage in elections) that backfires for the party in power, i.e., the party that divided the districts thusly.
Examples of dummymander
One option for making the 5th district more competitive — slicing off parts of Kansas City—comes with the risk of what’s called a “dummymander.” That’s when a partisan attempt to carve up a district backfires, causing the other party to win.
—Daniel Desrochers and Jonathan Shorman, McClatchy Washington Bureau, 27 Aug. 2021
Consider an arbitrary group of thirty-three voters, consisting of twelve voters from Party A and twenty-one voters from Party B. If Party A must draw three districts of equal population, then, in principle, it can draw two districts consisting of six voters from Party A and fivefrom Party B, and a third district consisting only of eleven voters from Party B. Such a plan gives Party A a majority in two out of three districts, despite the fact that it only holds approximately one third of the group's population. The problem with attempting to do so is that a slight shift in preferences can have devastating consequences. If just two voters from Party A switch allegiances, one from each of the two Party A-majority districts, Party A becomes the minority in all districts, and Party B wins all three districts. Grofman and Brunell refer to such a backfired attempt at a partisan gerrymander as a “dummymander” …
—That outcome was helped along by one little-remarked effect of attempting to maximize a party's seats by drawing advantageous districts: If political winds change, a district map drawn in one party's favor might end up backfiring the “dummymander.”
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Where does dummymander come from?
Dummymander is a portmanteau of dummy and gerrymander. Its coining is credited to Bernard Grofman and Thomas L. Brunell, from their contribution to a 2005 book about redistricting.
We will argue that … the result of failing to understand the carrying capacity of the lifeboat on the part of the party controlling the districting process and/or its reluctance or inability to take the appropriate measures, is what we will call a dummymander. A dummymander is a gerrymander by one party that, over the course of the decade, benefits the other party, and actually looks as if it was designed by that party rather than the party in power.
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How is dummymander used?
In addition to the noun dummymander, there is the noun dummymandering as well as the verb dummymander.
… if they can’t hold these Hispanic inroads, but especially in places like Texas, where they redistricted on the assumption that they would get a certain percentage of the Hispanic vote. So it could turn their gerrymandering into dummymandering …
—Tennessee governor candidate and Memphis councilwoman Jerri Green says if Shelby County voters take three House seats, Republicans “dummymandered” their way in.
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