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Gerrymander fix part 2: the Legislature will decide whether to reform the redistricting process

Gerrymander fix part 2: the Legislature will decide whether to reform the redistricting process

HARRISBURG — When the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the state’s last congressional map, it blasted away gerrymandered districts and replaced them with more balanced ones for this year’s election.

But larger questions about whether and how to reform the redistricting process in the long term were left to the legislature.

“We haven’t succeeded in further removing what got us in trouble in the first place, which is partisan self-interest,” said David Thornburgh, head of the Committee of 70. The Philadelphia-based good-government group is part of a coalition advocating for fairer maps. “We may have better maps but we haven’t fixed the process.”

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On Tuesday, a group of state senators and, separately, two state representatives renewed discussions about proposals to have an independent citizen commission, rather than lawmakers, set the state’s congressional and legislative district boundaries. Advocates had been pressing for change, but the conversation was on hold during legal battles over congressional districts.

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“I would have had three hearings already, but the lawsuit got in the way,” state Sen. Mike Folmer. R-Lebanon, chairman of the chamber’s state government committee, said Tuesday. “We probably would have had a product already done.”

Mr. Folmer said he postponed the hearing after consulting with lawyers, in part to avoid having testimony tip the outcome of the case.

Now, if they want to pass something in time for the next redrawing in 2021, legislators find themselves facing a tight deadline.

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“That’s going to be the challenge,” Mr. Folmer said.

His committee spent four hours Tuesday hearing testimony about four Senate bills that would seek to create an independent commission to draw the congressional or legislative district lines — or both.

Under the current process, the legislature passes bills with the new congressional lines every 10 years, after the U.S. Census happens and seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are shifted to account for changes in population. (Pennsylvania is once again on track to lose a seat in the 2021 reapportionment.)

Lines for Pennsylvania’s state legislative districts — 50 Senate seats and 203 House seats — are drawn by a committee of legislative leaders, plus an additional member.

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Three of the four Senate bills would create commissions to draw both sets of lines, while the fourth would only create a commission to redraw congressional lines (which would require a less cumbersome process to become law).

Some would give political leaders a role in the selection of commissioners — raising questions about how independent the commission would truly be — while others would seek to select people from random pools. The number of commissioners would range from five to 11.

Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Lehigh, whose bill has been a primary focus in part because it has support from a Republican colleague, said at the hearing that she wasn’t married to any particular aspect of her proposal but believes in the importance of having an outside commission decide the lines. Without it, she said, state legislative leaders can pressure their colleagues to vote certain ways by threatening to draw them out of their districts. She said it happened to her once when she was serving in the state House, so she ran for the Senate instead.

Some Republicans said that they were tired of hearing excuses about districts making it impossible for Democrats and others to succeed, arguing instead that elections hinge on the quality of the candidates. Many of them also asked three of the bills’ prime sponsors — who are Democrats — whether they think independent commissioners could vote as a bloc to push an agenda, or whether the commissioners would understand difficult concepts legislators themselves sometimes struggle with.

Ms. Boscola at one point compared it to serving on a jury.

“I just have a lot of faith in their ability to do this. They’re not the same people we are,” she said, prompting an outpouring of applause from redistricting advocates in the audience.

First Published: March 28, 2018, 1:03 a.m.

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