The Republicans, under the guise of assisting black voters, used gerrymandering after the 1990 census to win back the House during Clinton’s term. The abuse and manipulation of this practice is horrifying and it must be stopped. See this essay.

This article in today’s Inquirer discusses how she hasn’t passed a number of reform bills.  It includes the redistricting reform of this spring. She defends herself with “if it’s not right it shouldn’t be done” hoping that the public will believe her definition of “right”. She seems to not only have lost respect, which is a shame, but lost two other very critical items:

1. She has lost a chance to make an issue of true reform for this state. And now it looks like with “Bonusgate” the Democrats gamble that they would control the 2010 redistricting may fail. They will deservedly suffer from an even worse redistricting from the Republicans in 2010 if they do lose the House this fall.

2. She lost the chance to make a “defining moment” for herself. A chance to stand up and be counted not just as a Legislator but as a true Representative of the people. She had a chance to fight “the good fight” and to be hero to all of us so desperate to witness a display of integrity in our politicians. Is is sad that she couldn’t see what could have been done. She lacked vision.

Yes, we will wait another ten years. Perhaps then we will find a few representatives that kept their ideals intact when they took their oaths.

See this post for a good discussion about gerrymandering and it’s evils. Note that it says repeated that it is all about the politicians controlling the voters and not the voters selecting their representatives. No matter how much our Representatives give excuses, gerrymandering is one of the basic problems in America today.

http://www.radioopensource.org/redistricting-the-art-and-science-of-gerrymandering/

Rep Josephs doesn’t want to burden the Legislative Reference Bureau with the task of redistricting because she says they don’t have the expertise. The LRB can pay for help from any number of Universities in Pennsylvania and they can purchase software that does the job.

Here is one company, (Caliper.com) that makes software (Maptitude for Redistricting - gotta love that name!) that would help with redistricting for Pennsylvania.

Here is a quote from the company on one of the features:

MTR  includes all the municipal boundaries including counties, townships, school districts, etc. You can use these layers as building blocks to create your districts. The software will warn you if you are about to split one of these district boundaries

To Senate Chairman of Apropriations, Gibson Armstrong to move SB346 Garmstrong@PASEN.gov, also Rep Joseph’s at http://www.pahouse.com/contact/viaLDPC.asp?district=182 ) to get her to move on HB2420.

If only we had independence from gerrymandered districts and true representation from our legislature!

Check out this story on the Democratic Leadership webpage.  Isn’t it time for our leadership to do exactly that, fix Pennsylvania? What happened to our 94 sponosrs? What happended to SB346 and Rep Samuelson? Why hasn’t Rep Evans stood up to be counted?

How can anyone who sees our districts and reads the  Pennsylvania Constitution  (see section 16 below) not agree our districts fail this simple test?  But because the US Supreme Court has no courage we suffer from unfair elections. Please send emails and leave voice messages to Rep. Josephs, she’s the one holding everything up.

Legislative Districts
Section 16.

The Commonwealth shall be divided into fifty senatorial and two hundred three representative districts, which shall be composed of compact and contiguous territory as nearly equal in population as practicable. Each senatorial district shall elect one Senator, and each representative district one Representative. Unless absolutely necessary no county, city, incorporated town, borough, township or ward shall be divided in forming either a senatorial or representative district.

David Broder of the Washington Post writes of the evils of gerrymandering:

Gerrymandering the larger problem

It’s long but very educational. At least Rep Cohen has the discussion. However do you need to do more than look at Rep. Cohen’s district (202) below and think something is being manipulated? If not, why so tortured? There is only one reason the Republicans did this.  Despite all the rhetoric by Rep. Cohen the fact remains the districts are not fair nor compact. I may not be able to define compact but I know it when i see it and district 202 is not compact.

Read the YoungPhilly Blog Gerrymander discussion

I am amazed that I’ve not seen any Representative writing in to any paper in support of HB2420 after Rep. Josephs pulled the vote. How can over 90 sponsors be so easily cowered by the PA leadership? This inaction just demonstrates more strongly how much power is in the use of gerrymandering. Please let all of the sponsors know how disappointed you are in them.