This is 99% indisible. I'm Roman Mars.

We've wanted to do a story about Jerry Mandry for years.

Once you take it as a given that we want to live in a representative democracy,

the next question becomes, how are we best represented?

We need to divide ourselves into groups, but on what basis should the lines be drawn?

Basic geography is a place to start, but there are always exceptions and nuances

that make defining voting districts solely among geographic boundaries problematic.

I think of this as a design problem, maybe the most important design problem of democracy.

Our friends over at 538 recently dove deep into this topic with a six-part series

that examines Jerry Mandry in different states around the country.

It's called the Jerry Mandry Project.

It turns out each state that they profile is dealing with representation

and Jerry Mandry differently.

The states are really acting as the laboratories of democracy that US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said they were.

We are going to spend the whole episode this week exploring that series

and playing scenes from four different episodes about Jerry Mandry in four different states.

Our guide along the way will be the host of the Jerry Mandry Project and producer at 538, Galen Drouk.

Thank you for being here, Galen.

Hey, Roman, thanks for having me.

So this might seem like an obvious question, but just laid out for us, what is Jerry Mandry?

Jerry Mandry at its most basic is drawing district lines to achieve a specific goal.

I think the most common form of Jerry Mandry that people are familiar with is partisan Jerry Mandry,

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