Patti Vasquez and guest co-host Ken Mejia-Beal are joined by Indiana Democratic State Rep. Matt Pierce. 

Pierce highlighted the challenges posed by gerrymandering and the potential implications of Indiana Republicans taking up a mid-decade redistricting scheme being pushed by President Donald Trump. Indiana's House has 70 Republicans and 30 Democrats, "so unfortunately," Pierce said, "that means they can provide the 67 seats they need on their own for a quorum. So we don't have the option that Texas has of being able to shut the place down." (Pierce was referring to Texas House Democrats leaving the state earlier this week to deny Republicans the quorum that would allow passage of the redistricting measure.)

Pierce also pointed out that Indiana has "some of the lowest turnout in the country. If we just activated a percentage of the people who have just decided the government is not relevant to their lives, that it doesn't matter who's running the state House and Congress, if we got those people engaged, found a way to make them feel like this is important enough to be involved, I think you could turn things around here, and that's the biggest problem I see," he told WCPT. 

Pierce added that with "Republicans being so good at ginning up the culture wars," Democrats in Indiana struggle to "cut through that to get to the real bread-and-butter issues that matter."

Catch "Driving It Home with Patti Vasquez" weekdays from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/driving-it-home).

And find the "Driving It Home (Full Episodes)" podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, YouTube, and Amazon.

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