Decisions are back in hands of the voters

The premise is a simple one, but one that forms the backbone of our civic process.

Voters are supposed to select their elected representatives, not the other way around.

That was at the heart of the historic lawsuit filed against the way Pennsylvania’s Republicandominated Legislature handled the Congressional redistricting process back in 2011. The process of drawing up the maps is mandated every 10 years, based on the results of the latest census.

That process is what resulted in what can only be described as Exhibit A in the battle against partisan gerrymandering, the somewhat infamous 7th Congressional District. So heinous were the contortions the Legislature performed that the 7th picked up the mocking nickname “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck.”

But there was nothing funny about the result. It did exactly what Republicans had hoped it would. It took what had routinely been a tossup district and turned it solidly red. That’s how Rep. Pat Meehan rolled to three successive blowout election wins, easily racking up 60 percent of the vote.

That’s because this new 7th District, which was bent and twisted to touch on voters in five different counties, was not an accident; it was a shrewd, cold political calculation. Its grotesque shape, two large land masses, included GOP strongholds while excising pockets of Democratic voters.

Thus what you had was the representatives selecting their voters, instead of the other way around.

The result was an electorate that increasingly was turned off, that questioned whether their vote even counted. The result? Turned-off voters checked out, staying away from the polls altogether.

The hope was the lawsuit that tossed out those old congressional districts would not only correct the ills of the old boundaries, but also rejuvenate voters.

It certainly had an effect on the candidates.

In the newly drawn 5th District, which puts all of Delaware County under one Congressional roof, along with a sliver of Montgomery County along the Main Line and a portion of South and Southwest Philadelphia, no less than 14 Democrats threw their hats in the ring. Eventually that field was pared down to the 10 that appeared on Tuesday’s ballot.

Republicans also had a slew of candidates before uniting behind former county assistant district attorney and deputy state attorney general Pearl Kim.

Sure, this horde of candidates also no doubt was spurred by the fact that they were competing for an open seat. Meehan was not seeking re-election after being snarled in a scandal in which he used taxpayer dollars to settle a sex harassment complaint filed by a former staffer.

But it wasn’t just occurring in this region

Districts were redrawn across the state. And the candidates responded. All 18 seats in the Pennsylvania Congressional delegation were up for grabs Tuesday, including five seats where GOP incumbents opted not to seek re-election. In total there are seven House vacancies, the most since 1976.

The 18 districts have attracted 84 candidates, more than at any time since 1984, when the state had 23 seats in Washington. So will the voters respond? Will they once again take part in the process, or will they do what they have too often done in recent years in the midterm, non-presidential election years. That is stay away in droves.

Primaries sometimes draw as few as 15-20 percent of those eligible to vote.

With the new districts in place, all those vacant seats, and the horde of candidates, the hope was that number could zoom to as much as 50 percent of eligible voters.

Yes, that means half of those eligible could stay away.

But it is light years better than it was.

The lawsuit that toppled the old gerrymandered districts argued that the partisan process was eroding one of the basic tenets of democracy, the notion of voters selecting their representatives.

Even worse, it was turning off many voters who, having decided their vote was not going to count anyhow, were checking out of the process altogether.

The ruling knocking down those old districts was the right thing to do.

Now it’s up to citizens to reengage. The candidates already have.