Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

If you stood in line to vote in this year's midterm elections, your feet were probably a little

tired, but overall, you probably felt pretty good. You were, after all, embodying one of the great pillars of democracy,

voting to be represented equally and fairly. But in many elections, that's become more of an

ideal than a reality because of one word, gerrymandering. That funny-sounding word describes what happens when the majority party manipulates district boundaries to maximize their chances of winning as many seats as possible.

How?

Well, by forming districts that essentially lasso in enough voters with demographics favorable

to their candidates.

The practice has existed for a long time, and it's been used by Republicans and Democrats

to guarantee wins.

But gerrymandering didn't become a real electoral cudgel until relatively recently.

Today, with the help of Martine Powers and the Washington Post political podcast,

Can He Do That? Let's look back at the moment when gerrymandering really became a thing.

It all started one morning in 2009.

A year after the Republican Party was dealt a major blow following the election of Barack

Obama.

That morning, a Republican political strategist named Chris Jankowski sat down for breakfast and opened the newspaper.

Jankowski worked for the Republican State Leadership Committee. His job was to get voters to give

a darn about state legislative elections, which wasn't an easy task.

You know, we were kind of the junior varsity and, you know, JV only gets so much attention.

As Jankowski thumbed through the paper, he came across a story about the census and how it affects Congress.

The once-a-decade count of U.S. residents is used to decide how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives.

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