Pennsylvania Republicans show the way forward on the road from republican legitimacy to authoritarianism.
The Great Republican Power Grab
Both Democrats and Republicans draw biased maps, of course — the two cases before the Supreme Court this term make that clear — but modern partisan gerrymandering is mostly the work of Republicans, who control a majority of governorships, as well as the legislative chambers in 32 states.
Their efforts to lock in this advantage by any means necessary — including by kneecapping any institutions, including the courts, that try to stop them — are the work of a party that has become, as the political scientists Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann put it in 2012, “dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
At stake are not just hundreds of state legislative seats, but also control of the House of Representatives, which Republicans currently hold by a 45-seat margin.
The most shocking case is playing out right now in Pennsylvania, where Republican lawmakers in 2011 created maps so skewed that when Democrats won a majority of the popular vote the following year, it translated into only five of the state’s 18 congressional seats.
Indefensible, right?
That’s how the Pennsylvania Supreme Court saw it last month, striking down the maps for “clearly, plainly and palpably” violating the state’s Constitution, and ordering lawmakers to submit new, fairer maps to the governor by Friday.
If they don’t, the court will substitute its own nonpartisan maps by Feb. 19, in time for the state’s primary elections in May.
Pennsylvania Republicans are furious.
The president pro tempore of the State Senate, Joe Scarnati, refused to comply with the court’s order to turn over data concerning the state’s current district lines, arguing that the justices overstepped their authority.
G.O.P. leaders appealed to the United States Supreme Court to block the order, but their request was denied on Monday by Justice Samuel Alito Jr.
When the Supreme Court speaks, that’s usually the end of the matter.
Not this time.
A Republican legislator this week moved to impeach the five Pennsylvania justices who voted to strike down the maps, on the grounds that they “engaged in misbehavior in office.”
Meanwhile, the GOP has submitted a new map to Governor Wolf with exactly zero input from Democrats who complain they had not even seen it before it was sent to Wolf.
The Republicans say it is in full compliance with the PA Supreme Court's demands.
Democrats, including Wolf, deny that.
But Wolf may pass it up to the court for their review, anyway.
He does not have to and, if he doesn't, it may fall to the court to make its own map.
Top Republicans in Pa. House, Senate submit congressional map to Gov. Wolf
A very good story today from Liv Navratil of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reporting from Harrisburg.
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