Redistricting solution must put voters first

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this year to stay out of cases alleging extreme partisan redistricting does not necessarily mean that state officials must go unchecked when they allow political considerations to override basic fairness to voters.

That’s because the justices are allowing state courts to address gerrymandering cases themselves, provided the decisions are made based on state laws and constitutions.

This week the nation was offered a reminder of just what that can mean to the fight for just treatment of voters.

A three-judge panel in North Carolina rejected state legislative district maps and ordered them to be redrawn within two weeks. The judges ruled that legislators took extreme advantage in drawing voting districts to help elect a maximum-number of Republican lawmakers.

The decision is particularly heartening in that it was a unanimous one delivered by a bipartisan panel of judges, who wrote: “The conclusions of this Court today reflect the unanimous and best efforts of the undersigned trial judges — each hailing from different geographic regions and each with differing ideological and political outlooks — to apply core constitutional principles to this complex and divisive topic.”

This should not be a partisan issue. Both parties have engaged in gerrymandering for generations. After all, the term dates to the early years of our republic. But the power of technology makes it too easy for politicians to take the strategy too far, creating districts virtually guaranteed to produce a victory for one side or the other.

For the sake of good government, lawmakers should have an incentive to reach out and consider the opinions of people with different views. That’s less likely to happen when districts are drawn to give them an overwhelming advantage.

And there’s something plainly twisted about the notion that politicians should get to choose which voters they represent.

Districts should be compact, contiguous and be reflective of political subdivisions such as county and city lines. Southeastern Pennsylvania voters know full well how gerrymandering produces misshapen maps that chop communities into pieces.

The North Carolina judges summed up the issue well:

“Partisan intent predominated over all other redistricting criteria, resulting in extreme partisan gerrymandered legislative maps. The effect of these carefully crafted partisan maps is that, in all but the most unusual election scenarios, the Republican Party will control a majority of both chambers of the General Assembly. In other words, the court finds that in many election environments, it is the carefully crafted maps, and not the will of the voters, that dictate the election outcomes in a significant number of legislative districts and, ultimately, the majority control of the General Assembly.”

This decision should make it clear that future maps must be drawn with much less emphasis on political considerations.

Lawmakers in Pennsylvania already are dealing with that reality in the wake of a 2018 state Supreme Court decision that led to the redrawing of the state’s congressional district maps. They are going to have be more careful in how they go about redistricting.

The ideal scenario would be for the state to finally switch to a system that gives an appointed independent commission the power to draw the lines. A commission appointed by Gov. Tom Wolf to study the subject recommended just that this summer.

Unfortunately Republicans, who control both houses of the Legislature, declined to take part in Wolf’s panel.

Ultimately it will be up to them to allow redistricting reform to move forward. There’s not much time to get it done prior to the next round of redistricting in 2021.

Now that judges have made it clear lawmakers no longer will be able to get away with proposing extreme gerrymandered districts, it makes sense to move forward with a process that eliminates their direct involvement in deciding which voters they are to represent.

It’s about time our leaders in Harrisburg embrace this popular idea and make it happen for the sake of all voters, regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof.

The people running North Carolina and other states plagued by gerrymandering should do so as well.

It’s time to finally put voters first.