Next to Totaro's sit two single-family homes, separated by a two-car garage.

If the people in those homes, and the others along Hector, ever want to write to their congressman about a shared concern, things could get a little complicated.

You see, the line separating the Sixth District, represented by Republican Jim Gerlach, from the Seventh, represented by Democrat Joe Sestak, cuts across this block at a 45-degree angle. As best I can tell, the folks in the house to my right are represented by Sestak, but the cars in their garage are on Gerlach's turf.

To make it more confusing, folks on Hector used to be in the 13th District, now Democrat Allyson Schwartz's domain. In fact, look northeast with me up Hector. See those trees just past that traffic light? They're in the 13th.

I live a few minutes from the families in these houses. We send our kids to the same schools, shop at the same stores, and share a hatred of the traffic light at Butler and Germantown. But on Capitol Hill, we have three different representatives. Which is to say: Divvied up into politically trivial shards, we're hardly represented at all.

This is what gerrymandering looks like at street level. Gerrymandering is the ancient partisan practice of drawing election districts so that your team always has more seats than the other guys.

Hector Street is just one of many spots in Pennsylvania where multiple districts collide inside one municipality. The state's congressional map looks like a jigsaw puzzle designed by a demented person.

Yet it is the product of precise partisan method, not madness. After the 2000 census, each party indulged in computer-aided orgies of self-interest as the new election districts were drawn. The GOP controlled more state capitols, however. Party leaders used that clout to pursue their goal of "permanent majorities" at the state and federal levels. One of the main tools was "cracking," dividing Democratic spots like Conshohocken among multiple districts to dilute their impact.

Pennsylvania ended up as the second-worst-gerrymandered state, according to one independent study. (Georgia Democrats took first prize.)

So who cares about this inside-politics stuff? You should. You're getting shafted.

Gerrymandering is a core cause behind the ills that make you angry at politics: the neglect of the center, the catering to fat cats, the nasty gridlock, the corruption, the unappetizing choices in the voting booth.

In gerrymandered districts, says Barry Kauffman of Pennsylvania Common Cause, "politicians really don't have to pay attention to their voting constituents, only to their funding constituents" - that is, the interests that bankroll their campaigns.

Gerrymandering breeds the type of arrogance that votes itself an illegal pay raise in the middle of the night. Or that hands the keys over to K Street lobbyists.

It's up to states to tame the gerrymander; a befuddled U.S. Supreme Court punted on the issue in a case that challenged the Pennsylvania map.

On Monday, a strong reform, backed by Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, will be unveiled in Harrisburg as House Bill 2420. The clock is ticking on it already. Because the reform requires a constitutional amendment, the bill must achieve first passage this June to prevent another Keystone gerrymander in 2011. (New Jersey has a relatively sane system.)

This bill would ordain that districts should be compact and contiguous, should not split municipalities needlessly, and should preserve communities of interest. Importantly, the bill would bar the use of voter data to lock in political advantage through computer modeling.

This effort may be too much, too late. H.B. 2420 is a lot for self-interested lawmakers to swallow before summer recess. But I'm going to keep writing about all the reasons you should rally behind this long-shot reform.

After 30 years covering Pennsylvania government, I'm so weary of its saga of division, backwardness and corruption. Partisan line-drawing is a prime culprit behind this sorry record. It's time to kill the gerrymander.