Movement within Pennsylvania’s General Assembly toward government reform may not be dead, but it’s barely breathing.

The profound lack of results is more than enough reason for citizens to demand that redistricting reform legislation is passed by early summer.

The boundaries of legislative districts to which voters are assigned are changed every 10 years to accommodate shifts in population. The shape of the redesigned districts are drawn by the very politicians whose political futures will be affected.

Redistricting as currently practiced has made Pennsylvania one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. Gerrymandering means drawing the boundaries of voting districts in such a way as to rig elections, thus denying citizens their right to a fair vote.

Politicians no longer need constituents to vote them into office. So insidious and long practiced is this “self-election” that many voters don’t connect the dots between gerrymandering and the hijacking of their constitutional rights.

Sure-fire signs of the effects of nonrepresentative gerrymandering you may have noticed include:

Loss of voting power: Voters lose their most important civil right – the right to choose their representatives. This basic democratic freedom is repeatedly stolen by politicians to ensure their own re-election and to expand their own political power. 

Low voter turnout: When the outcome of elections is predetermined by politicians, going to the polls and voting becomes an empty exercise. Eventually, voters stay home when they realize that they are not able to elect the representatives they want.

Political polarization: When district boundaries are drawn to guarantee the election of incumbents or another candidate from the same party there is no need to reach out to independent voters or attract voters from the other party. This means that real campaigning for office shifts to primary elections, which are usually dominated by the party’s most extreme supporters.

Those who finally take office are often more immoderate politically and more out of touch with mainstream Pennsylvania.

Unresponsive pepresentation: Politicians who are assured of re-election stop listening to their constituents. They vote themselves prerequisites, high salaries, generous health-care plans and retirement benefits. Their pensions are four times what they would get in the private sector.

So far, this is what we’ve gotten for our money:

After a half-decade of intense pressure from government reform advocates, the House and Senate passed a tepid lobbying law that barely addresses the issue of gifts, meals, travel and entertainment received by public officials. Lobbyists still don’t have to show all they spend to get what they want.

Pennsylvania has one of the worst open-records laws in the nation. It is to be hoped that something will be passed soon, but will it be just better than what we have or the best in the nation?

Politicians are not family heirlooms, yet some Pennsylvanians have inherited legislators from their parents’ generation. Many incumbents run unopposed and these noncompetitive elections frequently happen where district boundaries are drawn to protect the interests of incumbent lawmakers.

How can gerrymandering be stopped? Two words: Redistricting reform.

As long as redistricting is left to the discretion of politicians, political parties will continue to gerrymander Pennsylvania for their own political advantage.

If you care about the shape of representative democracy in Pennsylvania, call your state senators and representatives and demand that they work diligently to pass redistricting legislation by June.

If legislation is not passed by June, the next 10 years will be a blank check for more of the same.

 

 Andrea Mulrine is president of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania with headquarters in Harrisburg.