GOP lawmakers say they’ll appeal redistricting ruling
HARRISBURG – State lawmakers say they will appeal a federal court’s decision to strike down a plan adopted by the state Legislature for remapping the state into 19 congressional districts. In a 2-1 vote, the court ruled Monday that the redistricting plan’s deviation of 19 persons between the populations of the largest and smallest of the new congressional districts violated the constitutional one-man-one-vote requirement. The court gave the Legislature three weeks to come up with a new redistricting plan that eliminates the population differences.
Republicans, who control the state Legislature and engineered the plan, on Tuesday filed for a stay in the case, asking the federal judges to delay implementation of their order, said Stephen Drachler, spokesman for House Majority Leader John Perzel, R-Philadelphia. With the primary election only six weeks away, lawmakers fear redrawing the districts now could create various problems for voters, candidates and election officials.
Lawmakers are also considering appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Just in case the appeals don’t work, GOP staffers have already begun redrawing the map to conform with the court’s requirements. This will require only “very tiny, tiny changes,” said Michael Long, a Senate staffer who helped draw the original map. As a result, congressional districts won’t change significantly.
“Remember that 19 person deviation is a plus/minus,” Long said. “No district deviates by more than 10. So you can make changes with almost no discernable change to the district.”
But the changes could create problems for election officials, Long added.
“It’s not a simple task, which is what we tried to express to the court,” he said. “When you get down to a miniscule margin error of 19, there aren’t precincts that small. So, you get the point where you have to split voter precincts and that creates a whole host of problems for county election boards.”
Fifty-nine municipalities and six precincts are already split in the congressional map as it’s currently drawn. After the court required changes are made to the map, there will be three times as many split precincts and municipalities, Long estimated.
The revised congressional map may be unveiled as early as Wednesday, Drachler said.
The original map would have transformed a congressional delegation that now favors Republicans 11 to 10 to one that would give the GOP an edge of at least 13 to 6, political analysts said. Because of its sluggish population growth, Pennsylvania lost two House seats — dropping to 19 — in the nationwide reapportionment that followed the 2000.
Any new map must be approved by the state Legislature. Republican leaders believe they’ll be able to get the votes necessary to pass a revised plan.
But Democrat leaders hope they’ll be able to make some changes to the plan. When the original plan passed, not all Republicans supported it. As a result, GOP leaders needed to make some changes in order to gain support from some House Democrats.
“No reapportionment map in modern times that I can recollect passed with only one party’s support … This is a sterling opportunity for us to offer a vastly improved rendition in this mapping exercise,” said House Minority Leader H. William DeWeese, D-Waynesburg.
But to do that, the Democrats will need to be unified.
“The last time we passed a plan, part of the problem was some of the Congressional Democratic members were for the Republican plan because it was helpful to their individual districts and they were asking our members to vote for plan,” said House Minority Whip Michael Veon, D-Beaver. “It’s very hard to have the Pennsylvania House Democrats unified and voting the same way if the Pennsylvania Congressional Democrats are supporting different plans.”