Partisan maps for PA State House
I have several points to bring to your attention: Splitting up Murrysville (Westmoreland County) is unnecessary and against the general guidelines of the rules for making the new maps, not to mention it pits 2 Republican incumbents against each other: Rep Brooks and Rep Silvis. It splits the Franklin Regional School District. Parts of Franklin lose 2 reps , Brooks and Nelson, and are moved to a district dominated by Penn Trafford School sending Delmont to yet another new district. Voters overwhelmingly elected Carrie DelRosso to the 33rd district, overthrowing a long term Democrat incumbent Frank Dermody in 2020. New maps obviously are trying to erase that by giving her heavily Democratic new communities like Penn Hills. These maps pit 12 Republicans against each other and only 2 Democrats. That’s not fair. Allegheny County where I live is treated very unfairly toward Republicans. The average Democrat keeps 70% of their constituents, but the Republicans keep only an average of 44.5%. This needs to be more balanced or it appears to be intentional to favor D's. In addition, 5 out of the 8 incumbent R’s are negatively impacted by the new maps, but Zero-two of the incumbent Democrats are negatively impacted. The favoritism to the Democrats in Allegheny county is appalling. In addition, why do all 9 of the Democrat incumbents have districts that fall short of the population target? (92,628 residents to be exact) That is more than ½ a legislative district. New maps Sliced and Diced the 30th district currently belonging to Lori Mizgorski unnecessarliy. The map was rated an F for competitiveness by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project -- this means that the seats are more polarized and less competitive. It dilutes rural votes. Rural PA deserves fair representation, afterall rural PA is pretty much all of the state outside of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Changes should be modest and not effect 1/3 of the population of PA! Everyone hoped that Nordenberg would be fair, but he proved to be another partisan political hack failing miserably at the one task given to him. Go back to the drawing board and be fair to all Pennsylvanians!