This text is a part of a yearlong reporting venture centered on redistricting and gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. It’s made attainable by the assist of Highlight PA members and Votebeat, a venture centered on election integrity and voting entry.
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s highest courtroom has affirmed the state’s new legislative district maps and rejected last authorized challenges to them, clearing the best way for his or her use within the Might major.
In a quick order, the state Supreme Court docket on Wednesday mentioned the maps had been “in compliance with the mandates of the Pennsylvania Structure and the US Structure.”
The state Home and Senate maps had been drawn by the Legislative Reapportionment Fee, a five-member panel composed of Pennsylvania’s high legislative leaders and an impartial chair, and challenged by 9 separate events together with lawmakers, former elected officers, and personal residents.
The excessive courtroom on Wednesday additionally set a last major calendar for legislative candidates, permitting county election administrators and political hopefuls to start making ready for the election in earnest. Candidates can start accumulating signatures March 18 to look on the poll and should be completed by March 28, a compressed timeline.
The Legislative Reapportionment Fee launched the ultimate state Home and Senate maps in early February. Whereas the higher chamber’s map is unlikely to radically alter the composition of its members, the state Home map creates a number of extra seats that could possibly be received by Democrats. Advocates for the map say that’s as a result of it undoes a long time of partisan gerrymandering and displays modifications in inhabitants that benefitted Democrat-heavy areas.
The panel handed the maps in a 4-1 vote, with solely Home Majority Chief Kerry Benninghoff (R., Centre) voting in opposition to them.
He later filed one of many authorized challenges in opposition to the ultimate plan, claiming the state Home map infringed upon the Voting Rights Act by disregarding the normal redistricting standards outlined within the Pennsylvania Structure — like guaranteeing equal inhabitants in districts — and contemplating race as a dominant issue.
Benninghoff additionally claimed the map was drawn to learn Democrats and ignored Pennsylvania’s political geography, which he mentioned naturally supplies better Republican illustration within the Common Meeting as a result of Democratic voters are sometimes concentrated in a small variety of areas.
“[The final map] subordinates the nonpartisan redistricting standards for purely partisan functions in doing so, it creates violence to the structure,” Benninghoff mentioned earlier than voting in opposition to the ultimate plan. “That’s the very definition of the time period gerrymandering. And admittedly, it’s shameful.”
The panel’s nonpartisan Chair Mark Nordenberg, ex-chancellor of the College of Pittsburgh, strenuously pushed again on Benninghoff’s claims, pointing to the Home map’s superior scoring within the conventional standards as in comparison with the present one.
In a submitting to the state Supreme Court docket, Nordenberg argued the Free and Equal Elections Clause of the Pennsylvania Structure ensures that no voter’s voice is diluted as a result of partisan affiliation or place of residence.
“Moderately than arguing {that a} voter’s vote shouldn’t be diluted primarily based on the place the voter lives, Chief Benninghoff as an alternative argues that voters who vote for Democratic candidates ought to have much less of a say within the make-up of the Common Meeting as a result of these voters have chosen to pack themselves in cities,” he wrote.
Nordenberg went on to argue that, whereas the Voting Rights Act prohibits the usage of race as the only real or predominant think about redistricting, the Free and Equal Elections Clause permits the consideration of race.
Senate Minority Chief Jay Costa (D., Allegheny), a member of the Legislative Reapportionment Fee, mentioned in a press release he was happy with the ruling “as a result of not solely had been these maps truthful, affordable, and supported in a bipartisan method, right this moment’s determination means we will proceed with our election calendar and folk can start preparation to run for workplace or be taught who their potential representatives might be.”
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