A blueprint for a fair election map

Pennsylvania desperately needs a new system to draw up legislative and Congressional boundaries.

It is not by accident that four women are now representing southeastern Pennsylvania in Congress.

That is exactly four more than were members of the Keystone State delegation in D.C. before last November’s elections.

Actually, it is at least in part due to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

After ruling in favor of citizens groups who had sued, claiming the last redistricting effort to redraw Congressional boundaries was an unconstitutional gerrymander, the high court took matters into its own hands. Since Gov. Wolf and Republican leaders in the Legislature could not come up with a workable plan of their own, the court took on the job itself.

The court came up with a map that redrew the suburban districts, among others. Republican critics cried foul, claiming the Supreme Court – controlled by Democrats - was simply doing a little gerrymandering of its own. But the new districts stood.

The result, the 18 seats from Pennsylvania split right down the middle, nine Republicans and nine Democrats. That’s opposed to the 2016 Congressional elections, which tilted wildly red with 13 Republicans and five Democrats winning office.

But the court only treated a symptom, not the disease.

Don’t look now, but the boundary lines for the state Legislature and Congress will be redrawn again after the 2020 census, and Pennsylvania still has not addressed calls to get this process out of the hands of politicians, who have proved unable to resist carving out turf to suit their needs.

Drawing new legislative and Congressional districts is largely the duty of the state Legislature.

The federal offices fall under the state election code, while the state legislative mapmaking task is covered under the state Constitution. In order to change it, a bill would have to be passed by the Legislature in consecutive sessions and then put on the ballot as a referendum for voters. That would take us to May 2021.

There have been any number of efforts to address the issue in Harrisburg, most seeking to get the matter out of the hands of legislators and into some type of bipartisan commission. Gov. Tom Wolf has now created a commission to study the issue. But time is of the essence. Let us suggest a shortcut. An Upper Darby man has already done much of the work.

Philip Hensley, a 29-yearold from Drexel Hill is the winner in the first-ever Draw the Lines Pa competition, sponsored by the election watchdog group the Committee of Seventy, which sought entries from across the state in redrawing the state’s 18 Congressional districts.

Hensley, a political campaign consultant, drew raves for the competitiveness and compactness of the districts he drew up.

“In short, his entry checked all the boxes, with a flourish,” noted the judges.

“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,” Hensley said. “But that isn’t the only consideration. I wanted to make sure we had minority representation by preserving minority districts that we have in the map I drew.”

Hensley said he worked off the map created by the court.

“I actually thought the map the Supreme Court came out with was, obviously, an improvement, but not perfect.”

Redistricting is not a game of perfect. But it should be fair. That’s not something that is happening under the current system.

It’s unlikely that the Legislature would be removed from this process entirely.

That’s why we favor an independent commission, made up of members from both sides of the aisle in the Legislature, as well as experts and citizens, who too often are the forgotten entities in this process.

It is their votes that are at the heart of this process. And it is their votes that are too often neutered through the debilitating process known as gerrymandering.

Pennsylvania desperately needs a new system to draw up legislative and Congressional boundaries. Both the Supreme Court and Hensley have given them a base to work with.

Time is running out to get the job done.