AREA MAN HAS WINNING MAP
Statewide contest aimed at curbing gerrymandering
A Drexel Hill man drew up a good interpretation for how to make fairer electoral districts in a statewide map drawing contest.
Philip Hensley, 29, was the state adult champion in the first ever Draw the Lines PA competition for the inaugural fall 2018 term. This contest invited people to draw the state’s 18 congressional districts in a way that creates them more fairly and curbs the cracking and packing tactics of gerrymandering. Hensley’s map was declared the winner on Feb. 6 at the state capital and was complimented for the compactness and competitiveness of the districts he drew.
“Philip was the best among the mappers we evaluated at creating a balanced map. He did a really good job overall, register-
ing the second-best population equivalency score as well as strong compactness numbers, while still ending up with competitive districts,” the judges wrote. “His metrics are solid, and his explanation of his goals is sophisticated and excellent.
“In short, his entry checked all the boxes, with a flourish.”
For his efforts, Hensley was awarded $5,000.
“It was a lot of fun, it was really great,” said Hensley about being named the winner. He claimed the eastern region title before claiming the statewide adult championship.
Hensley, a political campaign consultant with a bachelor’s degree in political science from McGill University, said he decided to enter the competition at a time when he was working on Democrat Dan Muroff’s campaign for Congress last year when the district changed over from the 7th to the 5th.
He said he was given “pretty generous” directions and rubrics to create the contiguous districts using precinct data to draw the boundary lines.
“What I chose to focus on was making districts more competitive, which, I think, everyone understands intuitively is key to having democratic accountability and to have elections actually matter, but that isn’t the only consideration,” said Hensley. “As I wrote in my personal statement I wanted to make sure districts were compact and making sure we had minority representation by preserving minority districts that we have in the map I drew.”
Twelve of the 18 districts were scored for their competitiveness, meaning that a more balanced split among the two major parties with the registration numbers falling about eight percent of each other according to Hensley. He kept two majority-minority districts predominately situated within Philadelphia County.
The information provided to Hensley did not allow for the sophisticated district boundaries that could separate homes on the same block of a street, a move that created the former 7th Congressional District that was infamously noted as looking like the cartoon character Goofy kicking Pluto. The district expanded across a number of counties throughout the southeast region as a safe Republican seat. Republican Pat Meehan served the district in the U.S. House since 2011 until he resigned in 2018 amid a sexual harassment scandal.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania last year out threw out the state’s congressional map drawn up by the legislature and created their own map which was favored for being more balanced. Republicans, fearing they would lose some of their seats in the 2018 midterm elections, tried to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the enforcement of this map, but the high court did not act and let the map stand.
Hensley took a look at the state supreme court’s map for inspiration in making his own, noticeably keeping Delaware County as one district.
He said the court’s map isn’t perfect, but it’s a good step forward to ending gerrymandering.
“I actually thought the map the supreme court came out with was, obviously, an improvement, but not perfect. I won’t say I started with that map 100 percent, but I looked at that as a reasonable starting place and made adjustments to it,” he said.
One may wonder how hard it could be to create districts that are fair in the number of constituents that would be represented by a U.S. Representative (if the state has more than one representative), but gerrymandering makes for an “arcane and technical topic” according to Drexel University Political Science Prof. Richardson Dilworth, Ph.D.
“Drawing of electoral districts for explicitly partisan purposes, there’s a longstanding principle that that is not an acceptable principle and not the underlying idea of having geographically drawn districts,” he said when reached for comment Thursday.
The legality of gerrymandering has had a rocky road as cases trickle through the U.S. Supreme Court. Voting districts in North Carolina have been contested for over 20 years in the high court on issues about districts made based on race, while other cases discuss the packing of districts for political gain and wasted votes.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Wisconsin Democrats in their petition alleging unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering of voting districts for failing to show injury, leaving open partisan-based gerrymandering for the time being.
“It is amazing to me that it’s actually become a political flash point,” said Dilworth. “It’s not a sexy topic… it’s a complex, nuanced topic. I think the traditional answer of the future would be, ‘parties swing back and forth with power in most places and as soon as one party gets control
it’s gerrymandered in the opposite direction.’
“I don’t know that that’s true. The 2016 election was a real flash point that empowered a lot of fair district groups so I think there’s real movement.”
One such group advocating for fair districts is the Philadelphia-based Committee of Seventy which sponsored the Draw the Lines PA competition Hensley won.
“Having been involved in politics it’s something you’re intensely aware of because being able to draw the lines and dictate who the voters are often determine the outlook of elections,” said Hensley. “Whether they (a candidate) have a chance or not depends entirely on what the district looks like.
In recent years I’ve been aware of the issues because of the increased sophistication, meaning that gerrymandering has become more potent and powerful… such that even if one party gets a huge majority of the votes they wouldn’t get a majority of the seats.”
Fair districts in Pennsylvania may not be entirely possible according to Hensley and Dilworth.
“The reality is we’re not going to get fair districts in Pennsylvania consistently with the current setup of who draws the lines being allocated to the state legislature,” said Hensley. “If you’re counting on the state supreme court coming in to fix things, that’s going to depend a lot on circumstance. It also depends on how they
split counties and municipalities unnecessarily.”
“You can never take the power of redistricting away from the legislature,” added Dilworth, who noted a redistricting proposal to the state constitution to create an independent citizens redistricting commission failed in the legislature over the summer. “Simply by the American virtue of federalism, legislatures, state governments more generally, will always have the authority to make electoral districts.
“At some point in time the two parties will realize that they’re, ultimately, both going to benefit if they have non-partisan districts or if they establish a non-partisan commission that could draw up more fair districts.”