Senate District 20 does not pass neutrality test
Senate District 20 does not pass the test of neutral redistricting criteria In the proposed senate map, I newly find myself in Senate District 20. The draft map pulls the top of Lackawanna County, where I live, into the Senate 20th. As I attempted to provide quality municipality-level input to the LRC, I find that I cannot do so, because the map is a an incumbent-protection (“buddymander”) scheme from the outset. Locally focused line movements will not improve it. The LRC must toss out this map and start with a blank slate. There are much better alternatives that have been posted to the LRC site and will be posted. There are a wealth of mapping resources to facilitate the LRC’s starting with a blank map. It is widely acknowledged that incumbent protection was the basis for the Senate map. Chairman Nordenberg in opening remarks at the January 6th hearing acknowledged a “pursuit of a consensus map” and having “senate leaders to work out issues.” The lack of compactness is evidence of incumbency protection. Senate District 20 is shaped like a horseshoe, ringing Senate District 22 with (from southwest to southeast) Luzerne, Wyoming, Susquehanna, Wayne, and Pike Counties. The Pennsylvania Constitution requires that districts be compact. The lack of competitiveness in two intertwined districts is evidence of incumbency protection. The following statistics are from the LRC web site and Dave’s Redistricting. It is quite remarkable that the Democratic and Republican partisan leans are opposites of one another in the 20th and the 22nd, whereby the 20th is currently represented by a Republican Senator and the 22nd is currently represented by a Democratic Senator. District Total Pop Pop deviation (from Dave's) Deviation Dem Rep 20 265088 5034 0.0194 0.3966 0.5734 22 269105 9051 0.0348 0.5676 0.4047 I am not at all suggesting that you toggle populations between the 20th and 22nd. Rather, I am making a point that the process did not start from a blank map. It needs to. Incumbent protection, described above, is not a legitimate basis for redistricting: District maps belong to the people, not the politicians. Over the next decade, politicians may retire and elections will occur. The current senator comes from the southwest corner of the 20th district. From where will new candidates come from in a gangly district that encompasses all or parts of six counties? From a governance standpoint, the Senate District 20 is unworkable in that it encompasses two different watersheds under two different basin commissions, the Delaware River Basin Commission and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. These two Commissions have different compacts and different missions. I see that other commenters have remarked about different economies and interests within northeast PA. I will not. Economies (just like senators!) change over a decade. I ask the LRC to fully implement the neutral criteria as specified in our state constitution. You may refer to my previous comments (submission 47 – Viewpoint of the Independent Voter) in which I advised against the LRC making assumptions about broad communities of interests. Thank you for your consideration of my comments.