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Elected officials shouldn’t do redistricting | Opinion

Redistricting shouldn’t be partisan. Take politicians out of the process.

A puzzle of political districts sits on a table during a public input meeting of the Pennsylvania Redistricting Reform Commission at Tindley Temple United Methodist Church in South Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 28, 2019. The bipartisan commission, established by Gov. Tom Wolf, is seeking input from residents across the state on how future legislative districts should be drawn.
A puzzle of political districts sits on a table during a public input meeting of the Pennsylvania Redistricting Reform Commission at Tindley Temple United Methodist Church in South Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 28, 2019. The bipartisan commission, established by Gov. Tom Wolf, is seeking input from residents across the state on how future legislative districts should be drawn.Read moreTIM TAI / Staff Photographer

Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was again — in the words of Justice Kevin Dougherty — ”dragged into the process” of redistricting, the mandated redrawing of congressional and state legislative district boundaries following the publication of the U.S. Census.

Why did the justices have to get involved? Because the governor and state legislators were unable to resolve their differences over how congressional district boundaries should be redrawn in time for the upcoming primary and general elections. The court will soon be dragged into the process once more in order to resolve litigation contesting the maps for state Senate and House districts that the Legislative Reapportionment Commission approved on Feb. 4.

Is there a right way to do redistricting? This year, we’ve seen what can happen when one party controls the governor’s office and the other party holds a majority in the state legislature: political gridlock ensues, with subsequent decision-making defaulted to a reluctant judiciary.

» READ MORE: Pennsylvania has a new congressional map that will keep the state intensely competitive

Redistricting outcomes weren’t any better when one party controlled both the executive and legislative branches of state government. In 2011, then-Gov. Tom Corbett and the GOP-majority legislature produced a congressional redistricting proposal that featured bizarrely configured districts redrawn to favor Republican candidates. (The district shaped like “Goofy kicking Donald Duck” attracted national attention.)

In Pennsylvania, most of the power to make redistricting decisions is held by elected officials — individuals who have a built-in conflict of interest with respect to the reshaping of election districts. Redistricting decisions for elections to U.S. Congress are made exclusively by politicians — the governor and the members of the legislature. The process for redrawing boundaries for state Senate and House districts isn’t much better; four of the five members of the Legislative Reapportionment Commission are elected officials. Does it really make sense for us to count on these people to do redistricting right?

“Does it really make sense for us to count on these people to do redistricting right?”

John Kromer

As an alternative approach, Pennsylvania should create a truly independent commission that oversees a public process based on clear and enforceable standards. The commission should conduct statewide public hearings and provide an opportunity for interest groups and individual citizens to draw and present their own maps.

This isn’t a radical idea; the Committee of Seventy and other nonpartisan advocacy groups have been proposing a similar approach for years, first through efforts to amend the state constitution, then through their support of a bill designed to make it easier to draw fair districts. These initiatives failed to gain the political traction needed to reach approval in time to influence the current round of redistricting.

However, the reform advocates knew better than to rely solely on the legislative process to advance their goals. In 2016, the League of Women Voters, the Committee of Seventy, and several other groups created Fair Districts PA to “promote competitive elections and partisan fairness” and propose reforms. The Committee of Seventy launched Draw the Lines PA, a statewide project designed to promote education about elections and redistricting. This initiative engaged more than 7,200 participants statewide, many of them students and educators, in the drafting of a “Citizens’ Map,” one of several alternative maps considered by the Supreme Court.

In a recent online session that I viewed, Fair Districts PA organizers praised these citizen-produced maps while characterizing the present moment as just the beginning of a campaign to institutionalize a fair approach for both congressional and state legislative redistricting.

With respect to the state legislature, we were fortunate that, this time around, Legislative Reapportionment Commission chair Mark Nordenberg (the only nonelected official on the commission) provided the leadership needed to produce a redistricting plan with real integrity. However, it would be a mistake to assume that comparable leadership will emerge a decade from now in the absence of a constitutional amendment or a legislative mandate.

Other states have shown that letting a nonpartisan group take the reins with redistricting can produce a success. In California, a redistricting plan was unanimously approved by a nonpartisan commission without encountering subsequent litigation in state court, an outcome characterized as “really remarkable” by an election expert. A few other states have adopted a similar, nonpartisan approach. Now, with newfound public awareness of what redistricting is and how it should work, it’s time for Pennsylvania to follow their lead.

John Kromer, a Penn urban studies instructor and judge of elections in Northwest Philadelphia’s 22nd Ward, is the author of “Philadelphia Battlefields: Disruptive Campaigns and Upset Elections in a Changing City” (Temple University Press, 2021).