Court rolls the dice on gerrymandering ruling
Whether you are in a casino or a courtroom or state house, stacking the deck is wrong.
You don’t get to load up your hand with aces. You don’t get to put your best friends on your jury. And you aren’t supposed to carefully, surgically carve out a constituency that is exactly the people who will keep voting you into office and exclude the people who won’t.
That’s what gerrymandering is. It isn’t breaking the rules. It’s taking the rules and rearranging them into something that does what you want it to do, like a ransom note cut letter by letter out of other words.
And so some people were surprised when the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled this week that gerrymandering on the basis of party wasn’t something they could control.
The very obviousness of political gerrymandering makes that understandable. It’s out there. It’s not secret. Redrawing the lines with state elections is often an openly stated goal. How can the Supreme Court not recognize that?
Because it is possible for both sides in an argument to be right.
Associate Justice Elena Kagan was right in her stinging dissent, saying “The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government.”
Representative democracy doesn’t work if it’s not representative. If we exclude women, we have rules made that don’t understand women’s needs. If we exclude people based on their race or ethnicity or cultural background, we do the same. We have something that has all the words from the Constitution, but is made up of jagged pieces snipped from here and there.
But Chief Justice John Roberts was also not wrong in his majority opinion: “We have no commission to allocate political power and influence in the absence of a constitutional directive or legal standards to guide us in the exercise of such authority.”
The Constitution doesn’t specifically say the portioning of districts has to be fair to the minority political party. We protect people on the basis of those other things that are innate to who they are.
But politics can change on a dime. Your vote doesn’t have to correspond to your party. Look at today’s politics, where moderates on both sides say their parties have receded from the middle like a tide, retreating to further and deeper fringes. There is no way to draw districts around that.
The court needs legislators at all levels to either spell out better laws that protect people of all parties, or be willing, when they are the majority, to be fair to the opposition.
And if they won’t, we have to show them all that we care more about representative democracy than we do about winning, and regardless of district or state or party, vote in people who won’t stack the deck. - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on gerrymandering in the U.S.
Shame of the Senate
There was little for anyone to be proud of in the Pennsylvania statehouse last Wednesday: Not Republican senators, whose attempts to bully though a benefitscutting measure were crass, craven and cruel; not Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who let the proceedings run off the rails; and especially not Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, whose efforts to shout down a fellow lawmaker were as churlish and childish a display as are likely to be found among elected officials.
The tawdry proceedings centered around Republican efforts to end the state’s decadesold General Assistance program, which provides monthly cash assistance of about $200 to some of Pennsylvania’s neediest citizens. Republicans have long targeted the program, which Gov. Tom Wolf’s office estimates would help more than 10,000 state residents next year at a cost of approximately $24 million (about 0.07 percent of the state’s $34 billion budget).
Minority Democrats attempted to attach amendments to the bill to carve out continued support for certain recipients — military veterans, domestic-abuse survivors, people with disabilities and the like.
That Republicans were less than receptive to these amendments did not come as a surprise. But much of what followed did.
First, Corman put forth a motion to block Democrats from offering the amendments. When Democrat Fetterman, who presides in the Senate, essentially called time out and left the rostrum to confer with Republicans, Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, orchestrated what Fetterman later termed a hostile takeover.
“With the rostrum empty, Scarnati — who typically runs the floor when the lieutenant governor is absent — grabbed the gavel, called the chamber back to session and asked for a vote on Corman’s motion,” reported PennLive. “As a clerk began the roll call, Democrats stormed off the floor.”
They eventually returned, but Fetterman refused to allow the vote on Corman’s motion, instead recognizing state Sen. Katie Muth, D-Montgomery County, a leader in the fight to maintain General Assistance. She then read a letter from a beneficiary of the program — although it was difficult to hear.
For almost the full three minutes she spoke, Corman voiced his displeasure from the floor. Loudly.
“You need to do your job, Mr. President,” Corman shouted at Fetterman, who continued to acknowledge Muth. “Bring the chamber to order, Mr. President. It’s not a partisan job. You need to follow the rules.”
It was a quite a dispiriting display. And one that must not be repeated.
First thing’s first: Corman, whose 34th District includes Centre, Mifflin and Juniata counties and part of Huntingdon County, owes Muth an apology.
Whether the GOP leader was technically correct that the vote on his motion should have been called, the manner in which Scarnati hustled it before the body was, at the very least, underhanded. The spectacle of a veteran white male lawmaker bellowing over a freshman female counterpart was unsettling and, frankly, unbelievable. A 20-year veteran of the Senate should know better than to behave in a manner so belligerent, aggressive and flat-out rude.
Second: Fetterman, who is in the midst of his first go-around running the Senate, needs to better acquaint himself with parliamentary procedure. All matters before the Senate must be handled by the book. In overseeing Senate proceedings, Fetterman cannot act in a partisan manner. But it is clear majority Republicans can and will if given an opening.
The measure to end the program was eventually approved, 26-24. Two Republicans joined Democrats on the losing side.
Also on the losing side that day: Decorum, professionalism and respect.
When it comes to debating, amending and voting on legislation in the Pennsylvania State Senate, all sides can and must do better.