Pennsylvania governor rejects redistricting map

Republicans threaten to file federal lawsuit

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf will not submit a new Republican-drawn map of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts to the state’s high court, saying Tuesday that it uses the same unconstitutionally partisan tactics as the 6-year-old boundaries struck down in a gerrymandering case.

Wolf ’s move came six days before the deadline set by the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court to impose new boundaries for Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts, routinely labeled as among the nation’s most gerrymandered.

Wolf ’s office, which has not publicly released the governor’s own proposal, said it remained possible that Wolf would submit one to the court. He also left open the possibility of working with the Legislature to submit a consensus map by Monday’s deadline.

Republican lawmakers threatened a federal lawsuit and accused Wolf of lacking constructive ideas when he rejected their proposal. Some of his criticisms were “absurd,” they said, and they challenged him to produce a fair map that can be put up for a vote.

Redrawing the map of Pennsylvania districts could boost Democrats nationally in their quest to take control of the U.S. House. Barely three months before May’s primary election, district boundaries remain up in the air.

The governor said his office’s analysis of the plan put forward Friday night by leaders of the Gop-con- trolled Legislature concluded that it was clearly designed to help Republican candidates.

Moon Duchin, a Tufts University mathematician and who studies redistricting, reviewed the map for Wolf and called it “extremely, and unnecessarily, partisan” in a one-page summary released Tuesday.

An analysis conducted through Planscore.org — created by political scientists, legal scholars and digital mapmakers — concluded that the GOP’S redrawn map “is still seriously skewed in favor of Republican candidates and voters.”