Trudeau: Pay attention as Pennsylvania’s redistricting process progresses
Redistricting of Congress and the PA House and Senate is fully underway. The final census data has arrived. Party leaders and map drawers are busy. This year they are under close scrutiny by the press and an enlightened public. Divided government has helped create a more open process.
Pay attention. The many hearings this time will be a hollow exercise if the hired mappers fail to listen. We won’t know if public testimony will translate to action until we see the preliminary maps.
Voters are keenly interested in preserving communities. This is a nuanced task. Compliance with the Voting Rights Act can be abused to pack minorities into fewer districts. There are many forms of community, all of which deserve consideration.
Another frequently heard request is that the legal requirement of compactness must be balanced by geography. Maps must be drawn so all parts of a district are accessible from within that district. This means no districts with uncrossable rivers or mountain ridges.
The 2011 Congressional map was judged to be a gerrymandered mess because by every measure it favored one party. The defendants offered a revised map that was still gerrymandered. Because of deadlines for the coming primary election, the court appointed an unbiased out-of-state mapper. Contrary to howls from the defendants, the 2018 revision did not favor the other party — it removed the partisan bias of the defendants.
The new map resulted in a better balance statewide. It follows the letter of the law, but it created an egregious split in our community. Giving the California-based mapper due respect, local eyes immediately spotted a big problem when State College was split between congressional districts 12 and 15.
Using the 200-year-old boundary between Patton and Ferguson township was inappropriate. When the townships were created in 1801 the land was uninhabited woods. Now dense neighborhoods straddle the line which runs through homes, cul-de-sacs, student apartments, condos, businesses, and The Village at Penn State senior community.
Our community is split twice. We have partisan cracking of our House districts. The Centre Region recognizes State College borough as the downtown hub of our much larger community. Our 123,000 population justifies two Pennsylvania House Representatives working to represent our local community interests instead of being cracked among the current four who spill outside Centre County across 140 miles.
We also have the legal, but untenable, split in our congressional districts. Pennsylvania law does not allow growing cities to incorporate outlying areas. Our solution is to use Councils of Government (COG) to more efficiently serve our regional needs. Our Centre Region COG and school district encompasses the State College Borough plus Ferguson, Patton, College, Halfmoon and Harris townships. There are no “towns” in any of these townships.
Both chop up our university community, our school district community, and our economic community along I-99, the backbone of our region. The result is layers of representation that work at cross purposes.
Tipping their hand last week both the House State Government Committee and the Legislative Redistricting Commission held hearings about legal requirements for the new maps. They were essentially asking: How much can we manipulate districts without triggering court challenges? The essential reply from each expert was that all three sets of districts must meet the same fairness standards required by the Supreme Court in 2018.
Pay attention. In the past, legal requirements have been ignored and twisted. We would be naive to expect there won’t be efforts to twist them again. We’ll have 30 days to challenge preliminary maps when they become public.
Pay attention. Use online tools available at DistrictR.org and Dave’s Redistricting App to analyze them. Use FairDistrictsPA.com for more information.
Pay attention. Every issue you care about will be impacted by whether we have fair districts and meaningful elections.