2/14/2018 The governor of Pennsylvania rejects Republicans’ new map - Cartoonography

Democracy in America

Cartoonography
The governor of Pennsylvania rejects Republicans’
new map
The state's Supreme Court will probably redraw the congressional map itself

Democracy in America Feb 14th 2018 | by S.M. | NEW YORK

THE best thing that can be said about a new Republican-drawn congressional map
for Pennsylvania is that none of the districts resembles a cartoon character. But
erasing the lines of a comically gerrymandered district dubbed “Goofy kicking
Donald Duck” was not enough to satisfy an order from Pennsylvania’s Supreme
Court, said Tom Wolf, the state’s Democratic governor, on February 13th. 

When the court ruled on January 22nd that the map in use since 2011 was an
extreme partisan gerrymander that violates Pennsylvania’s constitution, it gave

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2/14/2018 The governor of Pennsylvania rejects Republicans’ new map - Cartoonography

legislators until February 9th to send Mr Wolf a fairer map. The redrawn districts,
the court advised, should be “composed of compact and contiguous territory” and
should not gratuitously divide cities and counties. Curiously, the initial order said
nothing about fixing the map’s skew toward Republican candidates, which has
afforded their party a reliable 13-to-5 advantage in a state with more registered
Democrats than Republicans.

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Adhering to the court’s words (in a 139-page

Latest updates
opinion made on February 7th) while
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Jacob Zuma subverting their spirit, Republican leaders
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of the Pennsylvania House and Senate set
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delays
GULLIVER Democrats. The resulting map is “prettier”,
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wrote Sam Wang, a professor at Princeton,
and deafness on the the Princeton Election Consortium,
PROSPERO
an elections blog, but “conceals ill intent”.
See all updates In rejecting the proposal, Mr Wolf said in a
statement that it “clearly seeks to benefit
one political party”. Moon Duchin of Tufts University ran the numbers: “There is no
more than a 0.1% chance”, she wrote (https://www.governor.pa.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2018/02/20180213-Summary-of-conclusions-of-joint-submission-
plan-M.-Duchin-021318.pdf)  in a submission to the governor, that a plan meeting
the court’s requirements “would have been as favourable to Republicans” as the
new map. It is, she concluded, “extremely, and unnecessarily, partisan”.

At the close of a letter in which he berated Republicans for their disingenuous

cartography, Mr Wolf extended a hand. “I remain hopeful”, he wrote, “that the
General Assembly...can submit a fair map to me for my consideration” before the

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2/14/2018 The governor of Pennsylvania rejects Republicans’ new map - Cartoonography

February 15th deadline. Hours later, two Republican leaders bit that hand. “With all
due respect”, they wrote, “your pronouncements are absurd...Quit being coy”.
Joseph Scarnati, president pro tempore of the state Senate, and Mike Turzai, the
state House speaker, challenged Mr Wolf to produce a “fair” map of his own for
legislators to consider.

With lawmakers and the governor at loggerheads, the court will probably put its
plan B in motion: redrawing the map with help from a so-called special master,
Nathaniel Persily of Stanford University. More lawsuits are likely, as Republicans
say the court isn’t authorised to redistrict all by itself. But according to Rick Hasen,
an elections-law expert, asking federal courts to intervene “would have even less of
a chance of success” than the Republican Party’s ill-fated plea to Justice Samuel
Alito immediately after the state court struck down the original map. 

Whatever map ends up sticking for the May 15th primary and the November
election, it will have a rather brief shelf life. After the 2020 census, legislators in all
50 states will again reshuffle district lines, beginning the squabbling anew.

Next

Do voters have a right to wear political garb at the

polling booth?

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