WHEN William Penn won a charter to found a colony across the Atlantic in 1681, he pitched Pennsylvania as a haven where “no law can be made...but by the people’s consent”. On February 5th, the United States Supreme Court took a step toward renewing that promise. Justice Samuel Alito quietly rebuffed an emergency request from Pennsylvania Republicans to preserve their highly gerrymandered map for congressional elections. The implications are huge: correcting the skewed districts could send as many as five more Democrats to Washington, improving their party's prospects of taking control of the House of Representatives in mid-term elections in 2018.
The battle began last month when Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the state’s district boundaries as “clearly, plainly and palpably” violating the right to vote enshrined in its state constitution. The court ruled that the Republican-drawn map had subverted popular will by delivering 13 of the state’s 18 seats in the House of Representatives to Republicans in 2012, 2014 and...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2C0GXMS
EmoticonEmoticon