Conservative Analysis of the Pennsylvania Redistricting Dispute

           The dispute over Pennsylvania’s redistricting of seats for the United States House of Representatives is based on a partisan objection, pretending to be motivated by non-partisan reasons, to an inherently partisan process.  Liberal Democrats are relying upon a misuse of a word, exaggerated claims of unfairness and a violation of the constitutional principle of the Separation of Powers.

Liberal Democrats are misusing the word gerrymandering in order to expand its use beyond its narrow meaning to prohibit partisanship and ideology completely from redistricting and exaggerating its effects.  The Democrats are attempting to deny the legislative power granted by the electorate to the majority-Republican Legislature in order to advantage Democrats over the status quo.   

            The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had ruled last month that the Commonwealth’s 2011 redistricting was unconstitutional.  Then, after the majority-Republican General Assembly redrew the map, in accordance with the ruling, the majority Democrats on the Court rejected the redrawn map and then secretly drew and imposed the Court’s own one that was more favorable to Democrats, even though the Court lacked constitutional authority to usurp the legislature, thereby violating the constitutional principle of the Separation of Powers.  The Court imposed the new map with only a few days notice before the beginning of the primary election process, which had already been delayed for the office of US Representative.  Republicans, including several US Representatives, are among those appealing the ruling in federal court.

One of the complaints made by opponents of Pennsylvania’s 2011 redistricting were that U.S. Representatives were choosing their own voters more than voters choosing them.  However, the redistricting is conducted by state legislators, however partisan or ideological their motivation.  Thus, the complaint would only be relevant to state redistricting, not federal.  One valid complaint, which is not about a necessarily partisan motivation, is that redistricting is favorable to incumbents, of either party, as the majority and minority parties in each chamber of the legislature usually compromise with each other and with the Governor to protect themselves and their colleagues.  However, this year a relatively higher number of incumbents were not standing for reelection.

The main criticism of Pennsylvania’s redistricting by liberals and Democrats is simply that the legislative lines were drawn to the partisan advantage of Republicans by gerrymandering, which split municipalities and counties and united distant areas through narrow corridors.  Although a few of the districts, like Pennsylvania’s 7^th, had obviously thus been gerrymandered, most were drawn to partisan or ideological advantage without having been gerrymandered.  I had explained last March that partisan or ideologically-influenced redistricting is not necessarily gerrymandering in my post, Gerrymandering vs. Acceptable Ideological and Partisan Redistricting, http://williamcinfici.blogspot.com/2017/03/gerrymandering-vs-acceptable-partisan.html.   Gerrymandering, named in part for a Founding Father, has been a practice since the early Republic.  It refers to the kind of districts shaped like Pennsylvania’s 7^th, not redistricting based, in whole or in part, on partisan or ideological considerations, but which are not thus shaped, which is the way liberal Democrats in Pennsylvania and across the American Union are misusing the word.  Republicans had been elected to a majority of the seats in the Pennsylvania General Assembly by voters knowing that Legislators would have the power to draw districts to their political advantage, as redistricting is an inherently political process, just as Democrats had done before.  The only difference in modern times is that computer technology enables legislators to create districts that are even more advantageous to one party or ideology or another or for the advantage of incumbents of either party.  Democrats had not challenged the 2011 redistricting until they had a substantial majority on the Supreme Court.  

            Even in Pennsylvania’s redistricting of 2011, partisan and ideological considerations were not the only ones, as districts were constitutionally-required to be contiguous and equal in population, based on the decennial federal Census.  Even though the state Supreme Court ruling last month neither expressly prohibits partisan and ideological considerations altogether, nor require the equal representation of the parties in the Commonwealth’s 18 federal House districts, as liberal Democratic Governor Tom Wolf demanded, the Court added the requirement that districts be “compact,” which it defined as drawn with minimal splitting of municipalities or counties, even though certain cultures, demographics, commerce and industries overlap county and municipal boundaries.  It is these considerations that often lead to similarities in party registration and ideology in the first place and why it makes sense to join such individuals together in a district where they can elect someone who understands them and holds similar views to represent them most effectively, instead of the provincial concerns about municipalities and counties, the boundaries of which themselves may be changed legislatively at any time. 

            The argument advanced by liberals and Democrats against Pennsylvania’s 2011 redistricting that it is unfair to Democrats that more Republicans were elected U.S. Representative, despite the Commonwealth’s 800,000 voter-registration advantage for the Democrats over the Republicans ignores the political reality that elections are not based upon registration, but upon how voters actually turn out and vote.  Because more Republicans turn out to vote than Democrats and more Democrats and others cross over to vote Republican than Republicans and others vote Democratic, statewide elections are almost always competitive in Pennsylvania, usually within two or three-hundred thousand votes, with both sides winning one year or the other, or, as last year, splitting the results.  The Republican dominance of state legislative seats, as in county government, is not an anomaly.  Furthermore, Democrats generally tend to be more concentrated in urban areas than Republicans are in suburban and rural areas.  In the rural Southwest, Democrats are more conservative than elsewhere and have been voting increasingly Republican.  Therefore, although redistricting did somewhat advantage Republicans, especially in the few districts that were truly gerrymandered, most of their electoral success in U.S. House contests was not earned because of any advantage from redistricting. 

            The map redrawn by the majority-Republican General Assembly after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling last month did not include any gerrymandering.  The districts drawn, in accordance with the opinion, were compact, without any salamander tail-like corridors linking distant areas, and minimized the splitting of counties and municipalities.  Yet the Court struck down even the redrawn map, instead drawing one itself, without any public input, and without any constitutional authority, which vests the redistricting power with the legislature, and without any possibility of appeal to any higher state authority.  It drew a map that minimized the political disadvantages for Democrats by creating districts evenly divided by party registration.  Although the districts are not gerrymandered in the Court’s map, partisan consideration is its obvious motivation.  The map drawn by the Court, despite its own ruling against splitting counties and municipalities, splits counties and municipalities.  For example, my county of residence, Berks, which is currently split into four U.S. House districts, and would have been split into only two under the General Assembly’s redrawn map, is split into three by the Court, with a tri-point among three municipalities that are not diverse from each other and Exeter Township is split into two districts, unlike on the Legislators’ map.  Unlike the map drawn by the General Assembly, which split Berks and united it with other counties in ways that reflected culture, demographics, commerce and industry, the Court’s map splits the suburban Philadelphia parts of the county into three districts, one of which unites the agricultural parts of southern Berks, not with similar areas in neighboring counties, but with the City of Reading in Berks and the Coal Regions north of the County.  Instead of linking Reading, where I reside, with the similar City of Lancaster, along with linking the similar rural Pennsylvania German areas of northern and western Berks to those of Lancaster and other neighboring Counties, as on the Legislators’ map, this agricultural and industrial region with a similar history and culture is instead split among diverse areas, such as suburbs and mining areas, on the Court’s map.  

            Furthermore, the outcry by liberals and Democrats against “gerrymandering” is inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the federal Voting Rights Act requires truly gerrymandered districts for blacks in certain Southern States.  

           Although the harmful effects of true gerrymandering are mostly of a provincial nature, except when used for incumbent protection, gerrymandering should be avoided as much as reasonably possible.  U.S. House districts ought to be compact, with minimal splitting of counties and municipalities, except when it is more reasonable to unite similar areas, even if doing unites people of similar party registration, party preferences or ideology to the advantage of one political party over another.