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 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, they 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, would hurt the Democrats chances for holding control of the US 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 in the rest of them.
In Ohio, those districts are about 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% of voters in 2015 and 2018 approved this.