CCFD Revised testimony
CCFD revised testimony on both House and Senate Districts 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.