784: Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map
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A quick warning. There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Okay, so this week, like the rest of us, Ohio is going to do the polls. And in Ohio, there are more people who vote Republican there, but not a lot more. Donald Trump and Barack Obama each carried the state twice. If the congressional delegation reflected the breakdown of Democratic and Republican voters in the state, there would have eight Republicans and seven Democrats sitting in the House of Representatives. But right now, it is not that. There are not seven Democrats. There are four. And that's probably the best outcome the Democrats can hope for in this week's election. In fact, they could do worse, which of course, what are the Democrats' chances for holding control of the U.S. House of Representatives? And why, you may ask, are Democrats only going to take two or three or four seats and not seven? At one level, it doesn't have anything to do with the issues or politics or Biden or anything like that. It really just comes down to gerrymandering. The districts are drawn to favor the Republicans, mostly by smashing lots of Democrats into just a few districts, giving Republicans majorities and the rest of them. In Ohio, the districts are as bad as they come, but here's what's different about Ohio. A few years back, something very unusual happened. Republicans and Democrats came together and they said enough. They changed the state's constitution, so the districts would be drawn fairly at last. 70 percent of voters in 2015 and 2018 approved this. Arnold Schwarzenegger was fought against gerrymandering going back to when he was Governor of California. He tweeted a congratulatory video. Now, as I want to congratulate the legislators, Democrats and Republicans alike for coming together and all of you together have terminated gerrymandering in Ohio. That's fantastic. Hard not to love how on-brand that guy is. That's a huge victory, getting rid of gerrymandering, which is the worst thing in America. It was a rare, come-by political moment. The Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich, was praising Democrats and voters' rights groups, making idealistic speeches. Listen, this is incredible what they did. We're now a model for the country and it just means we're going to have fair elections. They're going to be more competitive. Why does this issue matter so much? Well, because when you draw lines in such a way that only one party can win the district, it creates a polarizing effect. That's because he says, candidates don't have to worry about voters from the other party voting them out, the views get more extreme. They play to their base. Court voters from their own party, whether whatever red meat issues are popular. And that means we move farther and farther apart as a nation. And it all leads to, excuse me, getting nothing done. This is really big time.
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