• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Independent Voter News
  • Campaign Finance
  • Civic Ed
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Events
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Redistricting>
  3. gerrymandering>

Gerrymandered Pennsylvanians seeking a redress of their grievances

Carol Kuniholm
July 07, 2020
Gerrymandered Pennsylvanians seeking a redress of their grievances
Gerrymandering in Pennsylvania
www.youtube.com
Kuniholm is chairwoman of Fair Districts PA, created four years ago by other good-government groups in Pennsylvania to end partisanship in drawing of the state's legislative and congressional maps.

The Fourth of July commemorates the abiding right of the governed to alter or abolish any form of government that ignores the people's voice. The Declaration of Independence, signed 244 years ago last week, lists repeated injuries and usurpations that deprived the colonists of a voice in the establishment of laws, concluding: "In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injuries."

Supporters of redistricting reform considered those words over the holiday weekend with sadness. Some of us have spent 30 years asking for redress of an unfair redistricting process and an increasingly intransigent legislature.

More recently, we have attempted every lawful avenue of request, petitioning our representatives in Harrisburg in every way we know — with meetings, calls, emails, letters, postcards, op-eds, billboards, radio ads, petitions and resolutions of support. All have been met with silence, or with empty statements of support by those who could schedule a vote or easily move this reform forward.

Many members of the General Assembly, from both sides of the aisle, applaud and affirm our efforts. They know that the current system puts far too much power in the hands of just a few leaders — allowing men (they are all men) elected by a tiny fraction of the state's voters to draw district lines, set the legislative agenda and lock out any voice of dissent.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Those who hold the levers of power have ignored or blocked our continued petitions.

I write this on behalf of 70 members of the Fair Districts PA team. In the past month we have sent letters signed by hundreds of constituents to the Republicans who run the Senate, Joe Scarnati and Jake Corman, and Chairman John DiSanto of the Senate's State Government Committee. No response.

We have asked the new speaker of the House, Republican Bryan Cutler, and Chairman Garth Everett of that chamber's State Government Committee for a vote on bills. But we have received no assistance and no acknowledgement of the pressing deadline, which has now passed, for enacting this reform.

Thousands of Fair Districts PA supporters have now seen how arbitrary and unresponsive our Legislature has become.

Dozens of us have asked legislators for meetings and had no acknowledgment of the request.

Dozens have contacted legislators only to be told: "I'll let you know if I have questions. I see no reason to meet."

Dozens have met with legislators who say "this is a Democrat bill" or "you're a Democrat group" — both statements are untrue — as if that negates the request or absolves them of the need to consider its merits.

And most of us have been told the following don't matter:

  • Our number of cosponsors, the most of any bills in this or the last session.
  • The local resolutions supporting us, representing more than 70 percent of the population.
  • Our more than 100,00 petition signers.
  • The polling consistently showing more than two-thirds of voters support a citizens commission to take the place of the Legislature in drawing election district boundaries.

We've watched with sadness as bills introduced with one or two sponsors speed through both chambers without public comment, expert testimony or any evidence of public support.

We've listened with sadness as friendly legislators explain that "The bills that move are the ones leaders choose. It has nothing to do with what voters want."

We grieve as fellow supporters turn away in disgust, with the sad refrain, "Why bother?"

Our government is in a dangerous place: unaccountable, unresponsive, deeply divided, less and less able to hear the voices of those it promises to serve.

Unless our legislators return this summer, it is now too late to amend the state Constitution and institute an independent commission for legislative redistricting in time for 2021. But there are other possible remedies: strong guardrails on the current redistricting processes, immediate attention to legislative rules that put far too much power in the hands of too few leaders.

But this is what we want most: A change of heart, a course correction in the halls of Harrisburg. The voices of all voters should matter to every legislator — not just the the party faithful in a handful of leaders' home districts.

Until this changes, nothing changes.

From Your Site Articles
  • Partisan maps hurt children, liberal group claims - The Fulcrum ›
  • David Thornburgh, taking the family business a new way - The ... ›
  • CAP report: gerrymandering prevented gun control laws - The Fulcrum ›
  • A father-daughter film underscores states' rights to bar partisan maps ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Pennsylvania Supreme Court draws 'much more competitive' district ... ›
  • About Gerrymandering | Fair Districts PA ›
  • The Math Behind Pennsylvania's Gerrymandered Map Getting ... ›
  • Pennsylvania, gerrymandered: A guide to Pa.'s congressional map ... ›
gerrymandering

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow

Support Democracy Journalism; Join The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum daily platform is where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. Now more than ever our democracy needs a trustworthy outlet

Contribute
Contributors

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Julio A. Alicea

Policymakers must address worsening civil unrest post Roe

Sarah K. Burke

Video: How to salvage U.S. democracy from the "tyranny of the minority"

Our Staff

What "Progress" should look like, and what we get wrong

Damien De Pyle

The long kiss goodnight: Nancy Pelosi and the protracted decay of public office

Kevin Frazier

Demanding corporate responsibility for food system challenges

C.Anne Long
latest News

Ask Joe: Warring with AI is warring with ourselves

Joe Weston
22 September

Prioritizing the grand challenges

Leland R. Beaumont
22 September

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

The show must go on

Amy Lockard
21 September

Constitution Day conversation with Jamie Raskin: Preserving democracy today and tomorrow

Rick LaRue
Jamie Raskin
21 September

Meet the Faces of Democracy: Stephen Richer

Michael Beckel
Ariana Rojas
20 September
Videos
Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Our Staff
Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Our Staff
Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Our Staff
Video: The history of Labor Day

Video: The history of Labor Day

Our Staff
Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Our Staff
Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

Podcast: How states hold fair elections

Our Staff
14 September

Podcast: The MAGA Bubble, Bidenonmics and Playing the Victim

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
12 September

Podcast: Defending the founding principles of our government

Our Staff
07 September
Recommended
Ask Joe: Warring with AI is warring with ourselves

Ask Joe: Warring with AI is warring with ourselves

Pop Culture
Prioritizing the grand challenges

Prioritizing the grand challenges

Big Picture
Podcast: All politics is local

Podcast: All politics is local

Big Picture
The show must go on

The show must go on

Big Picture
To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Big Picture
Constitution Day conversation with Jamie Raskin: Preserving democracy today and tomorrow

Constitution Day conversation with Jamie Raskin: Preserving democracy today and tomorrow

Big Picture