Commentary: Let's make redistricting in Pa. more sensible

By Franklin L. Kury

Imagine a football game like this:

The Eagles defeat the Steelers in their first game and then they - the Eagles, not the National Football League - set new rules for the next game. The Steelers will have to go 150 yards to score a touchdown, but the Eagles will only have to go 50 yards.

Outrageous? Obviously.

Yet that is the way Pennsylvania's 18 congressional districts were gerrymandered by the Republican-controlled state legislature in 2011. The result is that we voters have been cheated out of valid representation in Congress.

Gerrymandering is the manipulation of district boundary lines in such a distorted manner as to secure and preserve legislative seats for one party at the expense of the public to be served. It is done by packing so many members of one political party into a district that people belonging to other parties don't really matter.

A classic example is the Seventh Congressional District in Southeast Pennsylvania.

The district has a bizarre piece of Montgomery County; most of Delaware County outside the city of Chester; sections of southern and central Chester County, though they are not contiguous; a bit of eastern Lancaster County, and an ink-spill blotch of Berks County.

Can the grotesque lines of today's Seventh District be explained as other than to provide a safe seat for a Republican congressman and eliminate any possibility of another Joe Sestak or Bob Edgar going to Congress from Delaware County?

Other districts across the state are as lopsided in favor of incumbents.

In the 2014 election, 14 of the 18 incumbent congressmen won by 60 percent or more of the vote. Of the other four, the lowest was 56.4 percent. These are truly safe seats, so safe that incumbents have little fear of a general election opponent. In defeating Republican Gov. Tom Corbett that year Democrat Tom Wolf received only 54.7 percent of the vote.

Clearly, Pennsylvania congressional elections are played on a field where one team needs to go only 50 yards to score and the opposing team needs to go 150 yards.

We can correct this outrageous imbalance with bills now pending in our legislature: Senate Bill 484, offered by State Sen. Lisa Boscola (D., Northampton) and House Bill 1835, introduced by state Rep. David Parker (R., Monroe).

These companion bills are designed to take redistricting out of the hands of competing teams and give it to an independent entity.

The two lawmakers are proposing an amendment to the state constitution that would create an independent commission to draw boundary lines for congressional districts, as well as for state House and Senate seats.

The commission would be composed of four Democrats, four Republicans, and three independents. These members would be selected at random by the secretary of the commonwealth from lists of qualified voters who are not officials of the political parties, public office holders, or lobbyists.

The commission members would be tasked with implementing standards for drawing districts that maintain municipal boundary lines, are compact, and include communities of interest. By following these criteria, the resulting districts would not have the grotesque distortions that now ensure political security for a political party or the incumbents.

The clock is working against these bills.

The next U.S. Census will take place in 2020. The party taking control of the state House and Senate that year will control the new district boundary lines that must be approved in time for the 2022 election.

So it is up to the state legislators elected this Nov. 8 to determine if an independent commission is in place for the next congressional redistricting in 2021.

To be in place for the next round of redistricting, the Boscola-Parker proposal would need to be passed in the 2017-2018 legislative session, again in the 2019-2020 session, and then go on the ballot for public approval. But without action in the 2017-2018 session, the political parties would again control the process in 2021.

What can you do?

Confront your candidates for the state House and Senate in this election cycle, and ask them to commit to passing the Boscola-Parker redistricting plan in the coming legislative session.

At stake is the restoration of a Congress that represents popular opinion, as James Madison and the other Founding Fathers intended.

Franklin Kury served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1966 to 1972 and the state Senate from 1972 to 1980. He is the author of "Clean Politics/Clean Streams: A Legislative Autobiography," and "Why Are You Here? A Primer for State Legislators and Citizens." flkury5@gmail.com.