The Pour Over Today - BONUS: TPO Explains Gerrymandering | 09.09.25

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 20 minutes… This week, they’re explaining gerrymandering. Join over 1 million readers with our free newsletter here Looking to support us? You can choose to pay here Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. Cru Surfshark Holy Post CCCU Upside HelloFresh Mosh LMNT Theology in the Raw Safe House Project Student Life Application Study Bible A Place For You Practicing Life Together Not Just Sunday Podcast

Do we play our own intro music? Jolene, Cholene. I thought you were going to go for Taylor. We don't have the rights to that song, so we may need to. Great censor. I'll just have to mute that. If we get sued over my rendition of Jolene. That's such a compliment.

That's a battle I welcome, you know? Hello and welcome to the very first episode of TPO Explaners. I'm Joe, podcast producer here at The Porover, and I'm here with Jason, our founder and editor-in-chief, and Kathleen, our managing editor. So here's the idea behind the show. Our readers share which topics they want us to explore, and then we bring that to the podcast.

Today's winner, gerrymandering. Now, I'll be honest with you. I don't know much about gerrymandering. I'm coming in as the guy with limited knowledge. Asking the questions you might be wondering yourself. Jason and Kathleen, on the other hand, have dug into the research and they're going to help me,

and hopefully you, make sense of it. One quick note before we dive in, this is not meant to be a deep academic lecture that covers every angle. Instead, think of this as a friendly, approachable way to get the basics down. That's what TPO Explaners is all about. taking the headlines you've seen, slowing down,

and actually understanding what they mean. Another fun thing about these bonus episodes is that for those of you who have been faithful listeners of the podcast, we are actually going to post video footage of us on YouTube and Spotify. So if you actually want to watch us dive deeper, you can do that too. I think a shallow dive. Sounds dangerous, but that's what we're going for. Yes.

Shallow dive. dive carefully. Yes. All right, Joe. So you're playing the audience. What do you know about gerrymandering? Explain it. What do you got? Okay. So I believe the main purpose, from what I understand, is to set up district zones in anticipation of an upcoming vote election for representatives and make it advantageous to your own respective party, whoever's leading the charge on the gerrymandering now it sounds illegal to me like if that's a thing why wouldn't this be happening every election cycle it sounds illegal it sounds illegal to me like why wouldn't it be happening every cycle that whichever incumbent party would just say hey we're just going to keep

redistricting drawing the lines in our favor so that we can maintain power so that that's my first thought um so you know one of my questions is with it in the news lately has someone found a loophole in this you know is that how this is happening um in texas and then i did see you guys as writers write about and i spoke about in the podcast episodes that there's some uh counter attack from governor newsome in california so that they're kind of balancing out texas um push for gerrymandering yeah how do you do um not too Abby. I think I, prior to researching this, I would have been in the same place. I feel like I thought, too, that gerrymandering was like this act that people do right before elections,

but it's much more broad than that. And it is legal. So essentially, gerrymandering is going to be any sort of drawing of a physical boundary for a voting district that is advantageous to a certain political party. And redistricting can happen. It typically happens with data from censuses, since I. Sensi. Sensi. So every 10 years, they'll look at how many people are in, you know, an area and they'll

redistrict based off of that. And you cannot redistrict to give an advantage or disadvantage to a race or to a certain protected class. Yeah, a protected class speaks a certain language or anything like that. But the federal courts,

I think even the Supreme Court, found that you cannot basically prove that or challenge that a district was drawn to and for the advantage of one political party. So it can't be challenged. Wow.

So it's, yeah, very broadly, like every 10 years, there's a census and the number there are 435 representatives and like how many of those representatives each state gets changes every 10 years and so like if iowa got five then we would need five districts well if we had four before then we need to redraw those lines and so we need to figure out how to divide iowa into five sections instead of four and doing so um doing so in different ways can just give like an edge or Democrats an edge.

And like Kathleen said, it's legal. It feels shady. State by state, you draw your own districts. So you can either do it with legislation. So you'd have to say, here's a proposal. Send it up through that state's Congress and then see if it's approved. Or you can have a third party, like a bipartisan or an independent party or an independent party or panel, draw the lines for you that then get approved.

And that's like each states do one of those two things. They don't get to pick. Well, I mean, it's like they do get to pick, but it's set like Iowa, for example, uses an independent. I actually don't know if Iowa does. But, okay. And California has an independent thing, but they're doing this push to have the legislature do it instead. You stick to one for that cycle and then come next time you can make the decision to flip it the other way. State law establishes what you do.

So as much as you can change state law, you can change it. But it's like generally states have picked one or the other. Gotcha. So Kathleen, what are the different examples of gerrymandering? Like how does one, how does one gerrymander? Yeah. I did. They're like fairly aggressively named.

And this is like the correct terminology. I've looked in a bunch of different places. Everybody uses this terminology. But different ways to gerrymander. So you have cracking, which is when you would. take a group of voters and you would split them up into a bunch of different districts. So I have this big group of voters. I'm going to crack them off.

Big group of Democrats. Sure, of Democrats. And I'm going to take, you know, 10 Democrats, put them here and 10 here. And I'm going to spread this 100 Democrats across 10 different districts so that they'll never get a majority in any of the districts. On the other hand, you have packing. So I'll pack all of those Democrats, 100 Democrats into one district and just say, all right, this district is going to win the Democratic seat. But then my other nine districts, since I moved all. all the Democrats into this one district, the other nine will be Republican one.

So broadly speaking, those are the two ways to segment constituents, to segment the voters. Like Jason said in his example, if we had a district that was getting merged, that's another way of gerrymandering. You can merge two districts, and then you have two incumbents that you're forcing to face off against each other. And then you can also kidnap, which is basically drawing, redrawing district. lines to exclude the incumbents' house from that district, which makes it. It's legitimately called kidnap. It's legitimately called kidnapping. So cracking, packing, hijacking, which is merging the two districts and kidnapping.

I had never, prior to reading this article and editing it, I had never thought about the hijacking or kidnapping. Yeah. But it makes sense, like, if you have incumbents just win more often, you know. And so if it's like, hey, Joe lives at this address and then we can redraw it so he's now in another district that where he has less name recognition or he has to go up against another incumbent um it's like instead of instead of separating the the voters you're you're like separating out just the single sole politician that you're trying to get out it's like the inverse

pretty much yeah like your strategy in that case is let's put the incumbent who's been in has a seat for a long time in a very disadvantage for that yeah that runner uh in a district where no one likes him or her. Yeah, yeah. So if you're going to run for office, live in the middle of the district. That's right. It'd be much harder.

But yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. To reach on the line. Let's be real. Some study Bibles feel more like textbooks, but the Student Life Application Study Bible, it makes scripture come alive in an easy to understand way. Created with young adults in mind, but awesome for anyone hungry to go deeper,

this full-color Bible pairs with the filament Bible app to unlock over 27,000 study notes, videos, devotionals, interactive maps, and more. It's basically like carrying a seminary in your back pocket. The new living translation keeps things clear and readable, while the study tools connect every verse to God's bigger story and your everyday life. Check it out at s-l-a-s-sb.com, or use the link in the show notes to save time and level up your Bible study.

So what questions do you have, Joe? Okay. If you, apologies if you said this earlier, but there's the tie to the census. So does it happen? Do states regularly do this every single cycle? No. Yeah. Great question.

So, and that's part of why it's in the news now is it's like a mid, mid decade redistricting, which is typically not done. You know, like the thought is, hey, every 10 years, you have to. redistrict. Like if you, if you have a different number of representatives, you have to figure out how to slice the pie in different ways. But to say, hey, that's like blatantly, obviously not the motivation because we just have the same number. We just, we just don't like where the lines are drawn. Um, so that's part of the controversy. And to your, Kathleen, maybe you know, like to my knowledge, it's, it's legal, but it's just kind of been frowned upon. And, uh, and like a,

a like it feels like something that has been done quietly as opposed to like oh we are we are overtly like claiming the title of gerrymandering and doing it and so I think that is some of what's different is right now Republicans are saying hey Democrats have like quietly gerrymandered these states and we're at a disadvantage we just need to catch up and so we're just doing it you know and owning it and then the Democrats are like in response California is like shoot, if we're just allowed to like say the quiet part out loud, we'll do it, you know. And so it's it's less that like it couldn't have been done in the past as opposed to like it just wasn't done and now we're owning it. Is that right?

I think it's been done a lot more than we thought. There was an early 2000 study that found that only 10% of house seats were not allocated by gerrymandering. And it's hard to break that cycle because if Republicans are in power and Republicans, are drawing the maps. The Republicans are going to make the maps advantageous to Republicans, which means they're going to win the maps, which means they're going to draw the maps. And it's this cycle of just people wanting things to be in their advantage. But it has gotten a lot easier to do and easier to hide because of computer programming. So you can kind of plug into computers like I want X amount of, I don't know, demographic data, X amount of people here

and X amount of people there. And it'll kind of tell you where to draw the lines. So you can use computer programs now to analyze a map and see if it's gerrymandered, and you can also use it to gerrymander the map. Okay. As a citizen in a voting district, and you guys are now telling me, this is totally new information that I've been part of a gerrymander and redistricting without really knowing it, it just feels like are they not required to notify people that have been changed into a different district?

Well, you, it's public. But like, for example, like, we're, we're sitting, I think, in District 2 of Iowa. And so, like, when you go and vote, you, like, you can only vote for the representative in District 2. And so you know what district you're in. And if the maps are redrawn, they'll be like, hey, now you're in District 1, you know? And, like, it's in Johnson County has moved as the number. number of representatives Iowa has had, have moved. But, like, it's so, but that's as much notification as you get.

Like, you won't get something in the mail being like, you got gerrymandered, you know. That's what I'm wondering. So even though, like, I've probably been part of this, it is public info, but they are not hand-feeding me or notifying me if I was part of that. I mean, yeah, because they're going to look at like, Ari, do we have a percentage of, you know, Democrats in this district, a percentage of registered Republicans, and then, I mean, I will say it's become more of a problem because used to be, even if you tried to do that, we had a lot more people who fell towards the center of the political spectrum. So it might be registered Democrat, but you might swing Republicans sometimes. And instead, what has happened over the last, however many years is we've just really polarized. So we don't have as many people there in the middle who might go either way. So then the gerrymandering, the placing those boundaries will really, be firmly established, like, this is a Republican district versus, yeah, we have more Republicans, but some of them might swing Democrats.

So it's become more of an issue as people have gotten more polarized. That makes sense. I do want to just, it was interesting to me, one of the things that becomes an issue is wasted votes because you're kind of spreading people, spreading people around. So not only we're having an issue with the same people staying in power, but also just that feeling you get as a constituent, like, is my vote counting. you know if you're being spread across districts where there's not a lot of people you know who can move the vote then it might feel like your your votes being um being wasted so yeah yeah okay you guys i think i have a much better understanding at least of the basics so i want to recap what i'm hearing and want you to tell me how i'm doing here okay so there's a lot of redistricting that happens from census data but it all it doesn't always follow the census cycle it can happen throughout the with census happens every 10 years it can happen throughout

that time you can't redistrict to advantage protected classes such as race so that's an important caveat to note and it differs state by state on how they redistrict whether it's through legislation or a third party independent organization that does that there are pretty forward terms for how to gerrymander such as cracking and packing and hijacking and kidnapping all strategies depending on how you want to play the game in your favor of your political party and a lot of this happens behind the scenes without us really knowing it uh we've gotten much more advanced with computer programming that has been a lot more has gotten a lot more sophisticated and easier to draw lines that are advantageous.

There is no requirement for me as a citizen to be notified directly if I've been changed. Yeah. Exactly. And furthermore, with the overall political environment becoming more

polarized, it is becoming a cleaner strategy, if you will, for the Empower Party because there's a lot more defined voting loyalty in this current political climate. So to do something like this is easier.

It's a more proven strategy because there's more well-defined citizens that are voting one way or another. I think you did a great job. I think generally gerrymandering is, I don't think anyone is pro-jerrymandering. It just feels like, hey, we're, the ends justify the means now,

but no one likes the means. and for exactly that reason. I mean, it objectively, you are trying to make some persons, some people's votes count less. You know, the one thing I want to let Kathleen correct is that it's actually pronounced Gary Mandering. Do you want to, well, we can close with this. You tell me this now. So the term was coined after this guy, Eldridge, Elbridge, Elbridge, Gary, G-E-R-R-R-Y, but pronounced Gary. Elbridge, Gary, basically approved some legislation that was advantageous to his party,

even though reportedly he was like, I don't feel good about this, but he was like, I'll sign it anyway. So he was the governor of Massachusetts at the time. He went on to be vice president, but it was while he was governor, he approved the redistricting of Massachusetts. So this is the state legislature that's being gerrymandered. Yes. Garymandered.

Right. So a local newspaper said that the district that he approved, looked like a salamander and they called it a gerrymander oh my goodness but since then we've been mispronouncing it and so it's good old gerrymandering do either of you watch parks and recreation or have watched it yeah the idea that jerry is being renamed gary and then larry and yeah it's great that's exactly what we thought of too oh my goodness so many layers to that show now i'm understanding we've been pronouncing historical we've been learning all along yeah yeah oh my goodness how educational is that show um yeah i don't think anyone likes gerrymandering like it's

something that we're uh tolerating more or doing out loud but it's it's kind of like the ends justify the means which i feel like is a fairly good segue into the christian perspective we wrote for the article that went along with this so i'll just read it here our hope is never contingent on a political outcome it's much more secure than that regardless of whether things get worse or better during your lifetime. Everything eventually ends well for followers of Christ. I feel like as we were explaining it, I could kind of see coming across your face. You're like, I've lost all control over my district and my vote. I feel violated. Right. Like, what is it? So I think just keeping that mind of, you know, there's a certain sphere of

influence we have, you know, locally, but our hope shouldn't be contentioned on that. Our hope isn't something different. That's our... It's a reason to look forward to heaven where it's a theography. That's right. There's no gerrymandering, just Jesus. Well, thanks, everyone, for joining us for our very first episode of TPO Explaners. We'd love to hear your feedback and your thoughts. Like, subscribe, comment on our YouTube channel, and let us know what you think.

Until next time. Bye. Turns out, your scrolling, browsing, and online shopping isn't so private. Hackers can access your personal info, conversations, and location details all with your IP address. Keep your deeds out of hackers' hands with Surfshark. Their VPN hides your IP address from prying eyes, letting you bypass geolocation tracking and keeping your scrolls and searches how they should be. Private.

Try today at the link in the show notes.