The Great Election Grab by Jeffrey Toobin (from The New Yorker)

This is a must read article on gerry-mandering, both historical and recent:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/12/08/031208fa_fact 

From the article:

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“There are now about four hundred safe seats in Congress,” Richard Pildes, a professor of law at New York University, said. “The level of competitiveness has plummeted to the point where it is hard to describe the House as involving competitive elections at all these days.”
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Members of the House now effectively answer only to primary voters, who represent the extreme partisan edge of both parties.
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James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, said the House was meant to be a“numerous and changeable body,” where the members would have “an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people.” While the House was supposed to be impetuous, the Senate was intended to be stable. Madison said that senators would serve six-year terms as a defense against “the impulse of sudden and violent passions” of the House, and the members of the Senate were to be elected by state legislators, providing a further level of insulation from the popular will. (The Constitution was amended to require direct election of senators in 1913.) The Senate had to remain stable, Madison wrote, because “every new election in the states is found to change one half of the representatives.”

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