THE SUPREMES have sent an important message to politicians, Democratic and republican, that blatant gerrymandering, when brought before the courts, will not stand. The people of Pennsylvania will go to the polls on November 6th, 2018 and vote in congressional districts created for the people and not for any political party. This is significant for the 2020 census and the adjustments to and creation of congressional districts that follows each 10 year census. It should be noted that the Pennsylvania republican party has attempted to restrict and repress voters in the very recent past. From Politico and the Washington Post.....
Supreme Court won't block new Pennsylvania congressional map
Updated
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied Pennsylvania Republicans' request to stop the imposition of new congressional districts ahead of the 2018 midterms.
A statement from the court said a request to stay a ruling from the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court had been denied without comment or recorded dissent. The state Supreme Court ruled the previous map, drawn by Republicans in the state legislature and signed into law in 2011 by then-GOP Gov. Tom Corbett, was a partisan gerrymander that violated the state's constitution.
The court’s statement followed an order from a three-judge federal panel earlier Monday turning down a Republican request to halt the new map — essentially leaving Republicans with little recourse to stop the new district lines before the May 15 primary elections.
The filing deadline for candidates running under the new map is Tuesday. The new map, drawn by the state Supreme Court, weakens Republicans’ hold on a number of seats, especially in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Behind the scenes, Republican consultants prepared their clients for the new maps to stand, even as GOP congressmen and state legislative leaders sought relief from the courts. One GOP incumbent who saw his district become more Democratic under the new lines, Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.), is reportedly considering retiringrather than filing for reelection before Tuesday’s deadline.
It's the second time Republicans have failed to halt the state Supreme Court’s actions at the federal high court. The GOP initially applied for a stay after the state Supreme Court threw out the old map, but Justice Samuel Alito rejected that effortlast month.
After the state Supreme Court drew a map that unwound the GOP-friendly lines — on the new map, President Donald Trump would have carried 10 of the state’s 18 congressional districts, versus 12 on the old map — Republicans tried again, with urging from Trump himself.
"Hope Republicans in the Great State of Pennsylvania challenge the new 'pushed' Congressional Map, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary," Trump tweetedlast month. "Your Original was correct! Don’t let the Dems take elections away from you ..."
The high court could still agree to hear the case, even after denying Republicans' stay application. But none of the court's nine justices dissented for the record on Monday to indicate openness to reversing the state Supreme Court's actions.
Republicans in Harrisburg expressed disappointment Monday with the dual court rulings leaving the map in place.
"We are upset by the decisions today of the three judge panel in Middle District Court and the U.S. Supreme Court regarding redistricting. It is disappointing that the U.S. Supreme Court did not intervene," said GOP state Sens. Joe Scarnati, Jake Corman and Mike Folmer in a joint statement, noting that the district court case "was dismissed on the legal issue of standing," and not on the merits of the case.
“We still believe these issues in this case are vital constitutional questions that deserve to be heard, including the [state] Supreme Court taking on the role of creating legislation," the statement continued, insisting the state Supreme Court's decision to draw the maps itself "takes us down a path for the creation of another legislative body in Pennsylvania.”
Democrats, meanwhile, celebrated the decisions.
“Today’s two court rulings, including one from the United States Supreme Court, are important victories for the citizens of Pennsylvania and the fight against gerrymandering," said former Attorney General Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. "This November, Pennsylvanians will finally have the opportunity to vote for a congressional delegation on a fair map. By fighting against a fair map drawn by an independent court, Republicans have shown they are afraid of the very voters they claim they want to represent.”
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has drawn a new congressional district mapfor the state after finding that the previous map, drawn by Republicans following the 2010 Census, was an illegal gerrymander that deprived the state's voters of their right to participate in free and equal elections.
One of the criteria used by the court in drawing the new districts is “compactness.” This means, in short, that wherever possible districts should avoid the sprawling, winding, inkblot-like shapes that characterized the old Pennsylvania map, and gerrymandered maps in a number of other states, as well.
A Washington Post analysis shows that the court-drawn map is indeed considerably more compact than the Republican-drawn version, eliminating more than 1,100 miles of borders drawn by Republicans to give themselves a partisan advantage.
Redistricting experts have a lot of ways to objectively measure compactness, using geometric qualities like district area, perimeter and so on. But the best way to understand compactness is visually. The three districts below, for instance, are geometrically compact.
The following three districts, on the other hand, are not.
Many states require districts to be as compact as possible because it's one way of ensuring that all the voters in that district have at least one thing in common: geographic proximity. “A district in which people generally live near each other is usually more compact than one in which they do not,” explained redistricting expert Justin Levitt of Loyola Law School.
District borders necessarily divide populations, so districts that are more compact put fewer divisions between and within communities. We can look at Pennsylvania as an example. Here, for instance, are the state's interior district borders under the 2011 Republican-drawn map. (I've eliminated the external state borders, because those are a constant in every district map.)
Now let's look at the interior borders under the court-drawn map.
It's obvious that these districts are more compact, less sprawling and less squiggly than the ones drawn by Republicans in 2011. And a visual inspection suggests that, compared with the Republican-drawn map, there are fewer internal borders overall. If, for instance, you were to unravel each district's boundaries and place them all end to end, it looks as though the total length of the boundaries would be shorter for the court-drawn map.
Fortunately, we don't have to just eyeball this. For each of the above maps, I've calculated the total length of the interior district borders as follows: First, I added up the perimeters of all 18 districts in each map. Then I subtracted the total perimeter of the state of Pennsylvania, to eliminate that constant quantity that never changes among maps.
Finally, for each map I divided the remaining sum by two: Each interior border is a boundary between two adjacent districts, so simply adding up the perimeters would double-count the length of the interior borders.
That calculation shows that in 2011, Republicans drew roughly 3,047 miles of interior district boundaries to divvy up the state into 18 districts. The 2018 court-drawn map, on the other hand, accomplished the same feat with 1,908 miles of boundary — a reduction of 37 percent, or 1,139 miles.
That works out to roughly the driving distance between Philadelphia and Miami. Or, to use a Pennsylvania-centric measure, it's like driving from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh 3½ times. Or like driving from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre and back, 26 times.
From a redistricting standpoint, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court removed 1,139 miles of unnecessary divisions between and within communities of Pennsylvania voters, divisions that Republican lawmakers put in place primarily to give themselves a political advantage over their Democratic opponents.
Compactness isn't the only measure of a district's fairness. After all, in response to the state Supreme Court's challenge, Pennsylvania Republican leaders submitted a revised map that was much more compact than their 2011 effort but which showed just as much partisan skew toward the GOP.
The new, court-drawn map is not only more compact than either Republican offering — but it also splits up fewer counties and municipal areas, it and more closely reflects the total partisan divide of the state.
The state's Republican leaders, for their part, have vowed to challenge the new state court-drawn map in federal court.
The justices stayed out of the gerrymandering fight, to the advantage of Democrats in the state.
