Redistricting Commission
TO: Legislative Reapportionment Commission I am a resident of Maris Grove, a senior continuing care facility of 1600 residents. I reside in Concord Township in Delaware County. I have been following Pennsylvania redistricting for several years and now wish to comment on your proposed redistricting plans. Many people who reside here are members of Common Cause Pennsylvania and/or Fair Districts PA. Congratulations on your work so far. You have been open and responsive to Pennsylvania residents. I trust this will continue until your job is done. There are two major concerns related to the Senate map: First, the population in SE PA has grown and will continue to grow in the coming decade. Yet the preliminary Senate map doesn’t reflect the loss of population in more rural areas of the Commonwealth and the gains in urban and suburban areas. Our part of the Commonwealth will not have as much representation as our population merits. FDPA believes that the LRC must adjust the Senate districts to better reflect the significant population shifts happening in Pennsylvania. Second, the LRC heard extensive testimony on Pennsylvania’s fastest-growing demographic group on the need and opportunity to establish Senate districts that would enable Hispanics to elect officials from their community. The proposed Philadelphia map has not gone far enough to provide opportunity for a Hispanic senator. The preliminary Senate map, however, splits the North Philadelphia Latino community into four districts: 1, 2, 3, and 5. If the proposed map is enacted as is, it is very unlikely that PA will see a Latino senator anytime in the next decade. I am pleased to learn that the number of Delaware County School Districts residing in more than one representative district will be reduced from 13 to 9. My school district, the Garnet Valley School District, will now be entirely in one representative district instead of two currently. However, I feel strongly that school districts should not be split, as they are communities of interest. Chester-Upland, Southeast Delco and William Penn school districts in Delaware County are the lowest resourced districts in the county and would be better represented undivided in the house map. Many people who have attended redistricting sessions have provided tables that supported their statements showing that the present mapping has been biased against SE Pennsylvania by making SE districts approximately 3% larger than the state average. Those tables show that the average district population of 63,869 for the 67 representative districts in the five SE counties (Chester, Delaware, Philadelphia, Montgomery and Bucks) is 0.29% smaller than the state average, which is 64,053. For the 16 senatorial districts, the 5 counties population of 264,109 is 1.6% larger than the state average of 260,054. In the House of Representatives, the district population range is 5034. For the Senate that range is 24170. I hope you will continue to search for opportunities to reduce the ranges. All Pittsburgh districts and many districts in southwest and central PA are well below the ideal population, while districts in Philadelphia and other Southeast PA counties deviations are far above that number. In effect, the map as drawn dilutes the voting power of our fastest growing regions and maintains voting power in regions that have lost population. With demographic changes likely to continue or increase this traps the urban areas in ten years of under-representation, getting increasingly worse. In conclusion changes to the proposed maps within the SE counties are warranted especially to address: - to provide a Latino opportunity district and - to reduce the population ranges. We hope that the new maps will reflect Pennsylvania’s changing demographics and population shifts and not favor one political party over the other. Nor should the new maps favor area over population. Thanks for your hard work in creating fairer redistricting maps for Pennsylvania. Sincerely, Elizabeth M. Davis