THE nicest 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 nicknamed “Goofy kicking Donald Duck” is not enough to satisfy an order from Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. So said Tom Wolf, the state’s Democratic governor, on February 13th.
When the court ruled that the map in use since 2011 was an extreme partisan gerrymander that violates Pennsylvania’s constitution, it gave legislators until February 9th to devise a new one. The redrawn districts, the court advised, should be “composed of compact and contiguous territory” and should not gratuitously divide cities and counties.
Hewing to the court’s words while subverting their spirit, Republican state lawmakers set to redrawing the map with no input from Democrats. The resulting map is “prettier”, in the eyes of Sam Wang, a professor at Princeton,...Continue reading
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