GOP running out of ways to block fair redistricting
The gerrymandered fortress built by Pennsylvania Republican leaders to deliver GOP victories in U.S. House races is beginning to crumble.
The latest cannon shot was delivered by conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who this week denied state Republicans’ request for a stay of an order from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that compels state lawmakers to redraw the boundaries of U.S. House districts in the state, or risk having the state court do it for them. The court ruled last month that the existing map was gerrymandered to benefit Republicans, in violation of the state constitution.
Of course, the Republicans aren’t giving up their fight to maintain the unacceptable status quo. According to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, state Senate President Joe Scarnati and House Speaker Mike Turzai are claiming they will attempt to meet the state Supreme Court’s demand for new district maps by Friday “but may be compelled to pursue further legal action in federal court.”
In other words, if they can’t figure out a way to continue guaranteeing GOP victories in a heavy majority of U.S. House districts in Pennsylvania, they’ll use any delaying tactics available to them.
Among those is their attempt to get state Supreme Court Justices David Wecht and Christine Donohue, who ran for their posts as Democrats, to recuse themselves from the gerrymandering case. Wecht’s “crime,” according to a report on PennLive.com, was that he previously spoke out against partisan gerrymandering. That’s a bad thing?
The state’s U.S. House districts, as currently drawn, are a joke, the creation of a blindly partisan GOP-controlled Legislature. The shapes of some of these contorted districts can’t be described with any terms to be found in geometry books. In our area, Rep. Bill Shuster’s 9th District looks like a dragon lying on its back reading a book. Shuster represents the easternmost parts of Washington and Greene counties, but his home base of Everett is more than a two-hour drive from here. Is Shuster adequately representing the interests of folks in Washington and Greene? Hard to say, but he sure isn’t a regular visitor to these parts.
The question now is whether the Republican leadership of the Legislature will make a legitimate attempt to create fair and reasonable U.S. House districts. If they fail to approve a new map by Friday, and gain the signature of Gov. Tom Wolf by next week, then the state Supreme Court would be left with no choice but to handle the work itself. That might be the best outcome for Pennsylvania citizens.
It’s our opinion that this process should never have been in the hands of state lawmakers in the first place. In nearly half of the states in this country, there are nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions in place to handle congressional redistricting. That’s a much better approach than to have politicians whose first allegiance often seems to be to their political parties drawing these district lines.
In Pennsylvania, Republicans are currently the ones in charge of redistricting. They have failed miserably to handle that job fairly and competently. But make no mistake. If Democrats were in charge, they also would be trying to skew the districts in their favor. It’s the whole system that is broken.
The current congressional map is an affront to the one man, one vote principle. Or one woman, one vote, as it may be. There are millions of Pennsylvanians whose votes in congressional races across this state are virtually meaningless. That needs to change. We hope that our lawmakers can achieve a temporary fix for this problem, but also change the system so that we don’t find ourselves in this mess again, no matter which party is in charge in Harrisburg.