Lawmakers in a democracy certainly cannot please every stakeholder.

But we count on the idea that the people we elect to public office need to be responsive

to what voters want if they wish to keep their jobs.

Does that still happen in places where legislative districts are drawn up to all but ensure

one party or the other will win every time?

From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd.

It was no compliment when then Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gary lent his name to the term we now pronounce gerrymandering.

It happened after he signed off on a legislative district in Boston that took the rough shape of a salamander,

illogical if you just wanted nice, neat partitions, but ideal if you wanted to include only voters inclined to cast ballots for what was then called the Democratic Republican Party.

But today, both major parties are looking to remake the lines around congressional districts in an effort to give their side a boost in Washington.

And nobody is even pretending there's any justification beyond the fact that they can do it.

My guest, who's been studying the phenomenon for years, worries about the effects this

has on a free and fair democracy. Sam Wong is professor of neuroscience and leader of the

gerrymandering project at Princeton University, also director of the Electoral Innovation Lab. Sam,

welcome to think.

Thanks for having me on.

So the point of democracy is supposed to be that citizens get to choose the lawmakers who serve them.

Does partisan gerrymandering flip that so that lawmakers in effect are choosing their voters?

Yeah, districting is weird because in the American system,

we use these districts to represent us. And so you might think that good representation might be

just to have, say, a legislature or Congress be us in microcosm, perfectly proportionally represented.

But the difficulty is that we have these districts. And so how the lines are

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