UPDATED: Governor Wolf rejects GOP-submited redistricting map

[BumRushDaShow]

Last edited Fri Feb 16, 2018, 05:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Thread updated with additional info as of 2/16/18. See posts #5 & #6.

ALSO - found this site - https://www.brennancenter.org/legal-work/league-women-voters-v-pennslyvania

It has the entire court history and the public documents associated with the original case, with links to the files. It also includes the copies of the maps submitted to the court by various parties (scroll down to the section "Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (remedial plan process)". There were 7 maps submitted to the court yesterday (Feb. 15th, 2018).

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Gov. Wolf rejects Pennsylvania Republicans' map proposal, saying it remains a partisan gerrymander

Updated: February 13, 2018 — 1:08 PM EST
by Jonathan Lai & Liz Navratil, STAFF WRITERS

HARRISBURG — Gov. Wolf rejected Tuesday a congressional map that top Republican lawmakers had proposed, saying it remains a partisan gerrymander drawn to benefit Republicans and does not comply with an order from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The governor told Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) and House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny), in a letter Tuesday, that he does not believe their proposed map “meets the demands of the people of Pennsylvania, the Court’s orders and majority opinion, or the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

Wolf left open the possibility that he would be willing to consider another map, if the General Assembly passed one for him to consider in time for the Thursday deadline imposed by the state Supreme Court when it struck down the current congressional districts on the ground that they had been unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans.

But it would be difficult for the House and Senate to pass legislation by day’s end Thursday. An empty bill, into which a map could be inserted, remains before the House. Their members remain on “12-hour call,” meaning the earliest they could return is Wednesday. Pennsylvania is scheduled to hold its primary election on May 15.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/wolf-rejects-republican-proposed-congressional-map-gerrymandering-case-20180213.html

I am also posting below what I posted in the LBN thread - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141986658

Link to tweet

TEXT
The Press Office
✔
@GovernorsOffice

Today, @GovernorTomWolf told @SupremeCtofPA that he will not accept the proposed map GOP @PaLegis leaders submitted because it, too, is a partisan gerrymander that does not comply with the court’s order or PA’s Constitution. http://on.pa.gov/2nZU1Oz
11:40 AM - Feb 13, 2018
Governor Tom Wolf Rejects Partisan Gerrymandered Map

Governor Wolf told the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that he will not accept the proposed map Republican legislative leaders submitted because it, too, is a partisan gerrymander that does not comply...
governor.pa.gov

Here is the press release -

Governor Tom Wolf Rejects Partisan Gerrymandered Map
February 13, 2018

Analyses, Non-Partisan Experts Say GOP Submission is Partisan, Gerrymandered

Harrisburg, PA – Governor Tom Wolf today told the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that he will not accept the proposed map Republican legislative leaders submitted because it, too, is a partisan gerrymander that does not comply with the court’s order or Pennsylvania’s Constitution.

“Partisan gerrymandering weakens citizen power, promotes gridlock and stifles meaningful reform,” Governor Wolf said. ” As non-partisan analysts have already said, their map maintains a similar partisan advantage by employing many of the same unconstitutional tactics present in their 2011 map.

“The analysis by my team shows that, like the 2011 map, the map submitted to my office by Republican leaders is still a gerrymander. Their map clearly seeks to benefit one political party, which is the essence of why the court found the current map to be unconstitutional.”

Read a statement from Professor Moon Duchin on her analysis here.

The analysis by Governor Wolf’s team confirms the universal analysis of various non-partisan experts that say the Republican leaders’ submission is another partisan gerrymander.

Princeton University professor Sam Wang said bluntly that “a prettier map can still conceal ill intent” and “it appears that Republicans are not dealing in good faith with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s order.”

A Washington Post data expert concluded, “Pennsylvania Republicans have drawn a new congressional map that is just as gerrymandered as the old one.”

The New York Times found the submitted map would extract the same partisan advantage for Republicans as the current one.

Brian Amos, a redistricting expert at the University of Florida, said, “…There was still a strong Republican bias, which is why the congressional and State Senate plans were struck down for being gerrymanders.”

https://www.governor.pa.gov/governor-tom-wolf-rejects-partisan-gerrymandered-map/

Here is the direct link to the document (PDF) that was included in the above press release as a link - https://www.governor.pa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/20180213-Summary-of-conclusions-of-joint-submission-plan-M.-Duchin-021318.pdf

The commentary in that document says in part -

We ran algorithms to generate many millions of alternative districting plans that scored better than the proposed Joint Submission Plan on the Supreme Court’s factors (respect for political boundaries, compactness, and population parity), but were substantially less weighted toward Republican candidates than the proposed Joint Submission Plan.

I concluded that the proposed Joint Submission Plan’s bias in favor of Republicans is extremely unlikely to have come about by chance.

There is no more than a 0.1% chance that a plan drafted to comply with the Court’s factors would have been as favorable to Republicans as is the proposed Joint Submission Plan.

When measured by tracking its partisan bias, the proposed Joint Submission Plan failed emphatically. Only the 2011 plan that is currently in effect started from a more severe partisan skew and stood out more in this test.

What is interesting is that now there is a new timeline in place since the Governor rejected before the February 15th deadline and the state legislature is not in session - which is fucking ridiculous that they are not called back (but then that is the GOP for you). The new deadline becomes February 19 (which I think is a holiday too) where the Governor could submit his own consensus map to the courts.

[bearsfootball516]

1. Good. Let an impartial 3rd party draw the map.

[Freddie]

2. Love our Governor!

Tom Wolf you rock!

[BumRushDaShow]

3. We MUST MUST MUST make sure he gets re-elected this year

because then he will be there during the 2020 census! Our political lives depend on it!!!!

[Marie Marie]

4. Ditto that and thankfully, during this important redrawing of

congressional maps that have been so beneficial to Republicans, we have a Democratic Governor.

[DeminPennswoods]

5. House Dems submit their new map

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-nation/2018/02/15/gerrymander-pennsylvania-congressional-map-democrats-redistrict-supreme-court-tom-wolf/stories/201802150158

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Just got an email update from my state Senator with a copy of the Democratic Senators' map

The email also indicated -

Who Has Submitted Maps

As of today, GOP leaders, the League of Women Voters, Governor Wolf, the House Democratic leaders, the Senate Democratic leaders, Lt. Governor Mike Stack, and a group of Republican voters have submitted various maps in time for the 15 February deadline of the PA Supreme Court. Now the PA Supreme Court shall consider the maps and make a decision by Monday, 19 February.

[DeminPennswoods]

7. Well, kudos to the state supreme court for working on

the President's Day holiday! At least it will be a quiet day with all other gov't offices closed.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Overtime/holiday pay! lol Also I updated the main thread

and have included a link to a NY law site that lists all the docs associated with this court case and it also has links to all the submitted maps (PDFs).

[DeminPennswoods]

9. Gov Wolf's map

Here is Gov Wolf's map submission to the court.

?Q=75&maxW=300&maxH=300

[BumRushDaShow]

10. I scanned through the 9 maps submitted

and don't envy whoever (I guess the Court) has to decide.

This is where a non-partisan commission would help and they would need to get the legislation moving (plus I think a state Constitution change completed as well, which would require a ballot question) to get that in place before 2020.

[DeminPennswoods]

11. They have algorithms for compactness scores, etc.

The Court's expert and his team are likely already running the maps through their programs as well as generating their own.

HB722 and SB22, the bills FairdistrictsPA is backing must be passed by this June in order to make it on the ballot in 2020.

[DeminPennswoods]

12. What map did you find the most reasonable looking?

Just curious as I wasn't able to view them all.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. Well

Looking at the boundaries and some of the reasoning that was proposed for why they did what they did, I found that 2 submissions seemed similar - that was Wolf's and a group called "Fair Democracy" (that I can't find any info on). Also some of the submissions included more than 1 map as an option and one submission I couldn't find an application to read it (it may have been AutoCad).

Since I live in Philly, I focused on what was being proposed in and around Philly - particularly because that is where you see the most gerrymandering going on. Knowing the population of Philly is ~1.57 million and knowing that the average district needs to be ~700K, that means that Philly would obviously need to be divided at least 3 ways, which is fine. But given that Montgomery County is the 3rd largest county in the state (behind Philly and Pittsburgh), the fact that some maps continue to divide it up 3 - 4 ways yet leaves Bucks County, which has a much smaller population, completely intact (with the only overflow coming from NE Philly), bothers me. Because Montco has a population ~800K, that means it would have to be split at least 2 ways, which is fine, but more than that is bothersome.

So I was looking for maps in that direction - i.e., towards allowing Montco to have a rep and then any overflow would go to a 2nd district. The Wolf & Fair Democracy maps basically do that.

Within the city itself, some submissions were attempting to deal with over a century of defacto segregation to allow either 2 majority-minority districts, or at least 1 majority-minority and 1, 50-50 split for the primary city districts. But I also know demographically, there are populations originally from the city that moved a certain direction into the suburbs, but they would still probably have a similar set of needs - so that should be reflected to some degree, on the splits. So for some maps, the split made little sense.

So with all of this in mind. I basically threw out I think 5 maps that split Montco more than 2 ways. That left Wolf's, one of Fair Democracy's, and one of "The Petitioners'" maps. The Petitioners are the group that represents 1 plaintiff from each current congressional district (18 in all).

But this is just me over here in SE PA. I can't speak for how these handle the rest of the state - notably around Allegheny County due to how you have Pittsburgh as part of that (and Pittsburgh's population justifies less than 1/2 a rep so obviously, some version of surrounding suburbs would need to be in there with the city to get the full population for a rep).

Some of the data that was used to generate the statistics for the boundaries was pretty comprehensive - including population, race, economics, education levels, party affiliations, past voting results, etc. Plus you have subjective stuff like common concerns within certain regions, so this is just not an easy thing to do.

[DeminPennswoods]

14. I still haven't looked at them all, but

I liked the League of Women Voters' and the Fair Democracy2 maps. I think both those maps got western PA right. I'm in Beaver County and Wolf's map has us divided into 2 districts (3 and 12). 3 is ok as it's basically the entire western border counties up to Washington County. Wolf's map puts the southern half of Beaver County snaking around northern Allegheny County and then grabbing Westmoreland and Somerset. That makes little sense to me.

I forget which, but one of the 2 maps has Beaver County with the northern suburbs of Pittsburh (North Hills, Moon Twp, Sewickley etc). That makes for a very compact district although one could argue it's not the greatest aggregration of communities of interest.

I think I would be happy with either of those 2 maps.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. The Court just issued the map - am posting on LBN right now. nt

[BumRushDaShow]

16. Coming back here, I just found this interactive link

to the originally-submitted maps where you could do a side-by-side comparison between any of the submitted maps and/or the current map (sortof moot but interesting) -

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/compare-pa-congressional-map-proposals-fix-gerrymander.html