Redistricting reform is just more of same

Asking the Pennsylvania Legislature to fix the state’s gerrymanding problem is a fool’s errand.

No wonder some people refer to our humble Commonwealth as the “Land of Giants.”

No, we’re not talking about William Penn or Ben Franklin.

We’re talking about Harrisburg.

Drain the swamp? Washington, D.C., has nothing on this crowd.

In case you missed it, this state just went through a contentious, to say nothing of expensive, battle over the way its Congressional maps are drawn.

The state Supreme Court tossed out the map as a blatant partisan gerrymander, used by Republicans to bend, twist and contort boundaries of Congressional districts to their own advantage, and that of their incumbents, and then drew up their own.

As you might surmise, this did not exactly thrill Republicans, who went to court to challenge the process, and then the map put in place by the court. They lost on both counts. Some Republicans then went so far as to broach the topic of impeaching the Democratic justices who put all this in place.

The new map will be in place for the May Primary in a couple of weeks, as well as the crucial November mid-terms.

But the problem of gerrymandering is not going away. Another census is on tap in 2020, which will then be followed by another redistricting process.

Since our elected officials — and make no mistake, if Democrats were in control of the Legislature we don’t think the results would be a lot different, they would shape the boundaries to their benefit as well — are incapable of walking the straight and narrow, the logical solution to this is to get them out of the process altogether.

In fact, there was legislation to do just that. Rep. Steve Samuelson, D-Northampton, introduced a bill that would create a citizens’ redistricting commission, which would draw the new maps based on the results of the census.

Unfortunately, some habits in Harrisburg are harder to break than others.

When the bill finally came up in the State Government Committee, politics reared its ugly head again.

That would be in the form of committee Chairman Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler. With no public hearing, and barely a word of public debate, Metcalfe put up an amendment that basically neutered the legislation. His amendment ignored the calls for getting the process out of the hands of politicians and instead created a six-member panel of legislators, with control again residing with the majority party.

Not only does the Metcalfe switcheroo leave citizens again on the outside looking in, but his plan also clears the way to keep that pesky state Supreme Court of the process as well.

Of course the Republican-controlled committee in short order passed Metcalfe’s amendment.

The measure now must be taken up by the full House as well as similar legislation sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Northampton, and Sen. Mario Scavello, R-Monroe.

There’s an easy solution to this. The Senate could pass the Boscola-Scavello version of redistricting, then offer that to the House and hope they approve that as opposed to lining up behind Metcalfe’s cynical, petty, political piece of partisan backlash.

Pennsylvania voters deserve meaningful change when it comes to the political chicanery known as gerrymandering.

Voters have a right to know that their franchise, that basic, prized elemental constitutional right, is not being watered down, or even in some instances being rendered useless.

That’s what happens when gerrymandering stands the political process on its head, allowing elected representatives to select their voters, as opposed to the other way around.

Redistricting has been a joke in Pennsylvania long enough.

It’s time to get the politicians out of this process.

Samuelson’s legislation would have done just that.

Metcalfe’s amendment offers what Pennsylvanians have become all to accustomed to — more of the same.

That’s why so many people refer to it mockingly as the “Land of Giants.”