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

We've wanted to do a story about gerrymandering 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 along 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

gerrymandering in different states around the country. It's called the

gerrymandering project. And it turns out each state that they profiled is dealing with representation and gerrymandering differently.

The states are really acting as the laboratories of democracy that U.S. 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 gerrymandering in four different states.

Our guide along the way will be the host of the

gerrymandering project and producer at 538. Galen Druk. Thank you for being here

Galen. Hey Roman, thanks for having me. So this might seem like an obvious question, but just lay it out for us.

What is gerrymandering?

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

I think the most common form of gerrymandering

that people are familiar with is partisan gerrymandering,

...