Revised CCFD testimony.
Please substitute this testimony for the testimony submitted earlier today by Citizens and the members of the CCFD. This testimony addresses both the House and Senate Maps. Thank you. IN THE LEGISLATIVE REAPPORTIONMENT COMMISSION OF PENNSYLVANIA JAN SWENSON, NADINE BOULWARE, ELLYN ELSHANAWANEY, WILLIAM S. GORDON, JASON MAGIDSON, AGGRIEVED PERSONS I. Introduction Individual aggrieved parties are citizens and voters of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and in the case of Jan Swenson and Jason Magidson, are members of Concerned Citizens for Democracy (“CCFD”), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, unincorporated association that has been studying and developing a neutral, judicially enforceable remedy to prevent partisan gerrymandering in Pennsylvania since February 2017. CCFD submitted two briefs in the case of League of Women Voters of Pa. v. Commonwealth of Pa. 175 A. 3rd 282 (Pa. 2018) which included a Step-By-Step guide to neutral redistricting. The brief was viewed favorably by the PA Supreme Court and its expert on redistricting. The 2018 Congressional remedial map, issued by the PA Supreme Court reflected the methodology and many boundary choices of the proposed Congressional map submitted by CCFD. We are asking the Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC) to use the same methodology used to create the 2018 Remedial PA Congressional map in its drafting and reformation of the proposed PA House and PA Senate district maps. We believe that the PA Supreme Court will find the current LRC maps unconstitutional as failing to comport with the compactness requirement and in some cases lack of compactness and splitting political subdivisions where not absolutely necessary. The PA Supreme Court will also find the proposed maps as violative of Article I Section of the Pennsylvania Constitution, the Free and Fair Elections Clause that bars partisan and individual gerrymandering and not enforcing design standards that will allow the Court to enforce judicially manageable standards for redistricting. Moreover, the LRC will miss an opportunity to draw its map using the strongest weapon to end partisan gerrymandering: rigorously compact districts composed of whole political subdivisions. CCFD offers a method to draw electoral districts compactly in the first instance or to reform proposed districts once drafted. The reason why the method is so important to the Aggrieved Parties is that the rigorous application of the PA Constitutional drafting standards results in compact districts composed of whole political subdivisions that both drive out partisan and personal gerrymandering and create an objective, judicially manageable standard to evaluate and reform districts that violate these standards. II. Main Points 1. Compact districts create a natural distribution of conservative districts in rural parts of a state, liberal districts in urban parts of a state, and swing districts in parts of a state with mixed voting populations (usually suburban territory), and districts that contain both factory towns and small cities. 2. Compact districts, with smooth borders, allow a court to easily detect partisan manipulation of electoral lines by observing districts with jagged edges and non-compact boundaries. Non-compact districts are often the result of individual or partisan gerrymanders. 3. Non-compact districts and districts with jagged or irregular boundaries can create a prima facie case for partisan drafting which can be followed by the claims of a non-partisan reason for the unusual boundary followed by direct and circumstantial evidence of partisan drafting such as a pattern of packing and cracking, a pattern of fragmenting racial or linguistic groups or a pattern of individual gerrymanders to favor or disfavor individual candidates. 4. The Pennsylvania Constitution’s four drafting criteria are all mathematical and lend themselves to a judicially manageable standard especially when compared to competing maps. Split counties, townships, wards, precincts, and other political subdivisions as well as compactness and population can be calculated mathematically and held to an objective standard. 5. CCFD offers a step-by-step method of drawing maximally compact maps that comply with the four main Constitutional drafting criteria. III. The Law of Redistricting after League of Women Voters of Pa. v. Commonwealth of Pa. 175 A. 3rd 282 (Pa. 2018) Article 2, Section 16 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides: § 16. Legislative districts. The Commonwealth shall be divided into 50 senatorial and 203 representative districts, which shall be composed of compact and contiguous territory as nearly equal in population as practicable. Each senatorial district shall elect one Senator, and each representative district one Representative. Unless absolutely necessary no county, city, incorporated town, borough, township or ward shall be divided in forming either a senatorial or representative district. (Apr. 23, 1968, P.L. App. 3, Prop. No. 1) The Constitution’s Free and Equal Elections Clause (“FEEC”) applies to state Legislative districts. By its wording, FEEC applies to all elections. The elections clause under Article 1, Section 5 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides, “Election shall be free and equal; And no power, civil or military, shall, at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage.” Although League of Women Voters of Pa. v. Commonwealth of Pa. 175 A. 3rd 282 (Pa. 2018) (“LWV”) dealt with Congressional districts, the basis for the ruling should apply equally to the state legislative district maps that the LRC has produced. The LWV ruling is based on the Pennsylvania Constitution, specifically, the FEEC, which is not limited to state or federal districts. So the ruling applies to all Pennsylvania residents and institutions, including the state legislature and the LRC. All three things--the two Constitutional provisions (Article I § 16 and Article I § 1 and 5) plus the LWV should be applied together when considering the LRC proposed maps. The Supreme Court held in the LWV that the Pennsylvania Constitution, specifically Article I Section 5 provides a remedy for Partisan Gerrymandering, 645 Pa1, 178 A.3d 737, 741 (2018). It further held, after quoting from Article II § 16 that other factors have played a role in drawing of districts besides the four drafting criteria in Article II § 16 such as incumbent protection. However, it held such other factors are wholly subordinate to the neutral criteria of compactness, contiguity, minimization of division of political subdivisions and equality of population. The neutral criteria provide a floor of protection for an individual against the dilution of his or her vote in the creation of such districts. LWV 645 Pa 1, 178 A.2d at 816-817. Subordination of the neutral criteria even in part, such as for partisan gerrymandering, creates a constitutional violation. Ibid. If these primary neutral criteria are utilized, the drafter is restrained from drawing partisan maps. And the map that results likely will not produce a partisan effect. IV. Exceptions to LRC Senate Map and House Map A. Exceptions to the Proposed Senate Districts Overall, many of the 50 proposed Senate Districts are noncompact and contain jagged or non-compact boundaries that indicate partisan or individual gerrymandering or incumbent protection with little regard for the four primary drafting criteria of Article II, Section 16 of the PA Constitution, and the mandates of the LWV. There is also a pattern of western districts having smaller populations than eastern districts thus increasing the power of voters assigned to underpopulated districts and diluting the votes of all voters assigned to over-populated districts. Population equality is readily achievable with smaller variances than are included in the LRC’s proposed Senate and House maps. Specific criticism of the proposed Senate districts are as follows: District 1 (herein D1) and D8. Both districts violate the compactness requirement of the Pennsylvania Constitution in that both D1 and D8 are unnecessary elongated to the north and south. This could be repaired by swapping territory on the West side of D1 and giving it to D8 and the heart of D1 back to D8. These are both democratic districts. D8 packs blacks and D1 packs whites. Both split Philadelphia wards unnecessarily. The absence of compact districts and arbitrary splitting of wards can be used to conceal partisan redistricting and erodes the emergence of a judicially manageable standard for redistricting. D5, D2, D3 and D7 all violate the PA Constitutional and Supreme Court standard by not being reasonably compact. Each of the districts are elongated from north to south and unnecessarily create confusion among voters as to whom their representative might be. Furthermore, Philadelphia wards are split that could be retained in whole. The districts could be improved by swapping territory between D2 (add wards 41 and 45) and D5 (add ward 65 and the rest of 64). D2 becomes a compact southern district and D5 becomes a compact northern district. Also, territory of D7 and D3 could be exchanged in order to make those districts more compact. In addition, it is a great loss not to use Broad Street as a dividing line between electoral districts because very few communities cross Broad Street and it would aid in people knowing the identity of their state senator. D9, D19 and D44 are elongated nort