If enactly, actually think this would be pretty compact as far as districtings I’ve seen put in place in my lifetime. Of course there could be confirmation bias going on since I’m less likely to look at districtings that aren’t thought to be gerrymandered, but it nothing strikes me obviously geographically silly.
Which isn’t to say that they didn’t run a their optimization algorithms to try maximize both partisan advantage and compactness, but this doesn’t look objectionably uncompact to me. I think the intent is key here and I do not know what that is.
They divided Allegheny county into three districts where one looks to be all of Pittsburgh and the other two are attached to as many rural counties as possible. If you’re trying to make districts that are both compact and minimize subdivisions, the non-Pittsburgh parts of the county should probably be with southern Butler and/or eastern Westmoreland counties (assuming the rest of Allegheny on its own isn’t populous enough to be a district).
I suspect the Philadelphia area is similar. That if you know nothing about the area and just look at the blobs relative to the counties, it looks okay. But if you know the areas, it’s obviously designed for partisan benefit and makes no sense otherwise.
See they had plenty of time to make a new map before the deadline. Even had time to bake in almost as much GOP advantage as their previous map. So this idea that the deadline was too onerous to allow them to create a new map was pretty much a non issue. They just didn’t want to do it, and that, as far as I am aware, is not a valid reason to refuse to comply with a court order.
So now that they blew their chance to make a map acceptable to both sides, a map will be provided for them. All they had to do was be fair, but they refused. So here we are.
Well, one thing that is different now is that the shape of the districts is no longer at issue. A court cannot look at the new districts and use their unusual shape against them. This distills the argument in the case to the pure assertion that gerrymandering is unconstitutional (by the state constitution) because it strips power from those voters who are [party X]. Whether that argument can/will stand scrutiny over time is questionable.
That’s not really relevant here. The court dictated the process for creating the new map. The process was not, two members of the legislature draw up a map and unless someone can put forward a constitutional argument as to why it’s illegal, that’s the map we’ll use.
Actually, it could very WELL be relevant. While the US Supreme Court did not issue an emergency stay at the request of the Republicans, there could be a different outcome now if the Republicans sue or file for Cert over the process.
This is a long way from being “over” in a legal sense.
Alito saw a court ruling that stated very clearly that the trigger for the PA SC to cause an outside expert to create a redistricting plan would be if either the legislature failed to create one or if the governor failed to sign off on one by the deadline dates set forth. Period, end.
Determining if a plan that the legislature presents is or is not still gerrymandering was not a criteria. Given that this is exactly one of the several possible paths the PA SC ruling allowed for, that Alito said is not for SCOTUS to get involved in, on what basis would he decide otherwise?
Now how the heck does that comply with the court ruling? The ruling was explicit that both the legislature submitting a map and the governor signing off on the map they created must happen by the designated deadlines or they would cause a map to be created by their designated outside independent expert(s). The governor creating one is not an option, no matter how fair that map is.
The same way that the legislature submitting one does. Both need to agree, so one proposes a map, and the other decides if they like it. If the legislature decides that the governor’s map is acceptable, then we’re done.
Of course, it’s likely that the legislature will not so decide, which puts this largely in the realm of political theater. But political theater is still a big part of real politics.
Nope, by the ruling we are already done. This is not largely political theater; it is exclusively so, and dumb theater at that. The governor had until the end of yesterday, 2/15, to sign off on a plan submitted by the legislature (by the previous date), or the contingency of the court causing one to be created by their selected independent expert(s) would be triggered. The legislature could say this is perfect and it would not matter. The only way that map gets used is if the court selected independent expert(s) chose that map.
Because a denial of emergency stay or injunction is not a ruling on the merits. If cert is sought later and granted, a ruling on the merits could proceed.
It doesn’t comply with the ruling, but the court is treading new ground her and could essentially rule whatever it wants as constitutional. That’s part of the danger of the court usurping the process.
The ruling stated a process and they need to follow that process. They cannot just do whatever they want. Yes the court designated expert could create a map that looks exactly like what the governor created and it would be unsurprising if the map created and the map proposed by the governor in fact are nearly identical - the governor’s map is likely close to neutral. But the process now has to be that the court designated expert(s) create a new map.