Pennsylvania: Legislature has long history of inaction on redistricting reform bills | WHYY

Now that legal challenges to Pennsylvania’s new court-drawn congressional map have been rejected, state lawmakers have turned their attention to the typical process by which the state reapportions congressional districts every decade. But some stakeholders are skeptical about whether any current proposals will ever make it to a vote. There are four bills circulating in the Statehouse right now. All call for an independent redistricting commission, but differ on details such as the role the legislature would play in the process, the number of commissioners, their qualifications, how they’d be selected and how to gauge potential partisan influences.

Pennsylvania: National GOP group drops lawsuit threat over Pennsylvania’s special election | Tribune

The National Republican Congressional Committee will not file a lawsuit over “irregularities” the group said occurred in last week’s 18th Congressional District special election, a spokesman said Friday. Republican Rick Saccone on Wednesday conceded defeat in his race against Democrat Conor Lamb. Unofficial tallies show Lamb, 33, of Mt. Lebanon won by 755 votes. The NRCC, which poured more than $3 million into the race, said the day after the election that it was considering legal action over alleged glitches in electronic voting machines, reports from people who said they couldn’t find the right polling places and a Saccone attorney who had to get a signed authorization from the Republican Party before an Allegheny County elections official would let the attorney watch the vote-counting process.

Pennsylvania: GOP chief justice slams Republican judicial impeachment move | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Thursday that he is “very concerned” about an effort to impeach his four colleagues who voted to overturn the state’s congressional district map and impose a new one. “Threats of impeachment directed against Justices because of their decision in a particular case are an attack upon an independent judiciary, which is an essential component of our constitutional plan of government,” Chief Justice Thomas Saylor said in a statement. Justice Saylor, elected to the court as a Republican, dissented from the majority in the case.

Pennsylvania: Supreme Court turns down gerrymander appeal from Pennsylvania’s GOP | Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court refused Monday to block a new election map for Pennsylvania that gives Democrats a chance to win four or more congressional seats in November. The justices turned down a second and final appeal from Pennsylvania’s Republican leaders, who defended the gerrymandered districts that had given them a steady 13-5 advantage over the Democrats for years. The new map gives Democrats a good chance to win half of the 18 House seats. Last week, they celebrated picking up a Republican seat when Conor Lamb claimed victory in a special election for a seat in southwestern Pennsylvania. Republicans have not conceded that race as final provisional ballots are counted. Lamb and all other candidates will run this fall in districts that have been redrawn.

Pennsylvania: Lack of court action on new Pennsylvania voting map causing concern | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

With Tuesday’s deadline for filing nominating petitions imminent, prospective candidates waiting for courts to take action on Pennsylvania’s radically reconfigured congressional map learned Friday that the wait will continue. By day’s end Friday, neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the U.S. District Court here had decided whether to grant requests from Republican lawmakers who want them to overturn the new congressional map put in place by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled that lines drawn in 2011 represented an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander favoring Republicans. Members of both parties and outside experts appeared to be at a loss to explain the courts’ inaction. The delay, at least on the U.S. Supreme Court side, is “quite unusual,” said Richard L. Hasen, a law and political science professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Pennsylvania: Special Election shows need for U.S. voting machine upgrades: experts | Reuters

Pennsylvania’s tight congressional special election underscores the need for states to replace aging voting machines and use paper ballots as backups to ensure the integrity of vote counts ahead of pivotal November U.S. midterm elections, election security advocates said on Wednesday. Democrat Conor Lamb led Republican Rick Saccone by only a few hundred votes out of nearly 230,000 cast in the closely watched U.S. House of Representatives election on Tuesday in western Pennsylvania. With many states using antiquated voting machines and with concerns about potential interference in U.S. elections by Russia or other actors, there is rising concern among experts about the need to safeguard American balloting.

Pennsylvania: The GOP Couldn’t Recount The Votes In Pennsylvania Even If It Wanted. There’s No Paper Trail To Audit. | Buzzfeed

Republican Rick Saccone still hasn’t conceded defeat in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District. But if he calls for a recount, his state’s use of older electronic voting machines guarantees that a real audit will be practically impossible. That’s because the four counties that make up the 18th exclusively use touchscreen voting machines manufactured by either Premiere or ES&S, and use no models that create a paper receipt, said Marian Schneider, Pennsylvania’s former deputy secretary for elections and administration. “Selections are written to computer memory. There’s no other record of the voter’s selection,” Schneider told BuzzFeed News. “Two different brands with the same kind of interface.” Any recount of such machines wouldn’t produce a formal audit. Instead, it would simply ask a given computer to repeat a tally it had already given, akin to downloading an email attachment and then downloading it a second time, overwriting the first file.

Pennsylvania: Republicans hint at recount in Pennsylvania congressional race | The Washington Post

Democrats have declared victory in the race for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, but GOP nominee Rick Saccone has not conceded — and Republicans have taken some tentative steps toward seeking a recount. Attorneys for Saccone have asked for “immediate injunctive relief” in federal court after a campaign lawyer was not allowed to observe the counting of ballots in Allegheny County, where Democrat Conor Lamb won massively. They sent letters to election offices in Allegheny and the district’s other counties requesting that ballots and voting machines be preserved, a step often taken before a recount or challenge. “We are waiting for provisional ballots to be counted,” said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We are not ruling out a recount.”

Pennsylvania: GOP gearing up to challenge District 18 results, impound all voting machines used in special election | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Republican officials are alleging voting irregularities in the District 18 special election, and say they plan to go to court seeking to impound all the voting machines used Tuesday. Democrat Conor Lamb of Mt. Lebanon holds a slim lead over Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone of Elizabeth Township. With a few absentee and provisional ballots still out, his lead is a few hundred votes out of more than 200,000 cast in the congressional district formerly held by Republican Tim Murphy. The seat had been safely Republican for more than a decade and national Republican organization spent millions supporting Mr. Saccone. But Mr. Lamb mounted a strong challenge and remained ahead in the vote count Wednesday morning. A Republican source familiar with the campaign said that the GOP planned to petition for the voting machines used in all four counties to be impounded, pending a recount.

Pennsylvania: Federal judges hear arguments in congressional map fight: Should they block new map? | Philadelphia Inquirer

A panel of federal judges, asked by GOP lawmakers to block the new Pennsylvania congressional map, on Friday questioned whether it should wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to act on a similar request and if blocking the map would further disrupt an already tumultuous election cycle. The three judges — Chief U.S. District Judge Christopher C. Conner for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Judge Kent A. Jordan of the U.S.  Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and District Judge Jerome B. Simandle for the District of New Jersey — were equally aggressive Friday in questioning both sides in the case during four hours of testimony. They said they would release a decision soon. A group of eight congressmen and two state Senate leaders, all Republicans, are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop implementation of the congressional map imposed last month by the state high court, arguing that the court stole power that the  Constitution gives to state lawmakers.

Pennsylvania: Hearing looms on Pennsylvania congressional redistricting issue | Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The only certainty in the congressional redistricting case is that Republicans lose if they can’t persuade a three-judge panel to grant a preliminary injunction, said Bruce Ledewitz, a Duquesne University law professor. The federal judges are scheduled to hear arguments Friday in Harrisburg. A preliminary injunction stops one side from taking an action while the other pursues its legal challenge. In this case, Republicans want to bar the administration of Gov. Tom Wolf from implementing a state Supreme Court ruling that overturned a 2011 congressional map for Pennsylvania drawn by GOP lawmakers. Since there’s little debate that map — considered one of the country’s most gerrymandered — is unconstitutional, the only question seems to be whether it will be used one last time for the 2018 elections, Ledewitz said.

Pennsylvania: Residents call on county to return to paper ballots | GoErie

Four Erie County residents on Tuesday called on County Council to switch from electronic touch-screen voting machines to paper ballots to ensure the security and integrity of elections. Their comments come on the heals of last month’s directive by Gov. Tom Wolf ordering counties that plan to replace their electronic voting machines to replace them with machines that leave a paper trail. Wolf said the order would increase the security of voting and make elections easier to audit, according to the Associated Press. In November, federal officials identified Pennsylvania as one of at least 21 states that had its election system targeted by hackers before the 2016 presidential election, according to AP. “You don’t have a paper trail for each vote,” said Hugh McCartney of North East Township. ”…What are we going to do. I know two options: Either you pay up those millions of dollars or go back to paper ballots.”

Pennsylvania: U.S. Supreme Court asks for responses to GOP bid to block new congressional map | Philadelphia Inquirer

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Wednesday asked participants in a key Pennsylvania gerrymandering case to respond to a request from top Republican lawmakers that the nation’s highest court step in and block the new congressional map. State Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) and House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the previous congressional map and imposing a new one. Alito gave participants in the case until 3 p.m. Monday to file responses to that request. He made a similar move a few weeks ago after Scarnati and Turzai filed essentially the same request to step in and stop the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from overturning the state’s congressional map drawn in 2011. In that first request, Alito also sought responses from the parties in the case before ultimately denying the request without comment and without referring it to the whole court.

Pennsylvania: Despite landmark court decision, subjectivity remains in congressional mapmaking process | WHYY

In the days after the Pa. Supreme Court released its new congressional map, students in Jon Kimmel’s 8th grade math class huddled around computers to analyze the changes. The class has been closely following the twists and turns of a case that could have an impact on the balance of power in Washington D.C. In January, the Democratic-majority court ruled that the congressional map created in 2011, in a process controlled by Republicans, was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The court found that the old map deprived voters of their right to “free and equal” elections and was designed to give Republicans an unfair advantage, while diluting Democrats’ votes.

Pennsylvania: Clinton County pushes for funding new voting machines | The Express

Clinton County commissioners are rallying financial support for new voting machines to improve election quality. Commissioners Pete Smeltz and Paul Conklin, who were present at Thursday’s voting meeting, said they submitted a letter to state Sens. Joe Scarnati (R-Brockway) and Jake Corman (R-Bellefonte), U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Howard) and State Rep. Tom Marino (R-Williamsport) asking them to put pressure on Congress to authorize the remaining $396 million in Help America Vote Act funds so Pennsylvania counties can replace aging election equipment. This cause has the backing of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP), and commissioners agree that most Pennsylvania counties need to replace their voting machines.

Pennsylvania: State Supreme Court denies bid to stop new congressional map | The Morning Call

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court turned away a request to halt the implementation of the congressional district map it produced after declaring the previous map an unconstitutional gerrymander. The court issued the order Tuesday afternoon, simply stating that the request for a stay, led by House Speaker Mike Turzai and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, is denied. The decision was not unexpected. Following the same fault lines as in other rulings in the case, Democratic justices Debra Todd, Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht had the majority, while Democratic Justice Max Baer and Republicans Chief Justice Thomas Saylor and Sallie Mundy dissented. Legal challenges to the map remain a live issue in the federal 3rd Circuit in Harrisburg and in the U.S. Supreme Court, however.

Pennsylvania: GOP asks the U.S. Supreme Court to block Pennsylvania redistricting | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Republicans have intensified their fight over Pennsylvania’s new congressional map, appealing to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday and reviving talk of impeaching the state Democratic Supreme Court justices who threw out the old map. Top GOP lawmakers submitted an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, asking the justices to block implementation of the new district boundaries. Meanwhile, national and state Republicans were preparing a separate federal challenge to the map. House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Bradford Woods, and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, submitted their application for a stay Wednesday evening.

Pennsylvania: New congressional district map could be challenged by Common Cause, NAACP on civil rights grounds | Philadelphia Inquirer

Common Cause helped bring down Pennsylvania’s old congressional district map. Now, in a twist, the good-government group might undo the new map that replaced it. Micah Sims, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, said his organization and the state NAACP are considering filing suit in federal court to challenge the new map imposed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court this week. He said it may violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which banned obstacles to voting by minorities. Under Pennsylvania’s former 2011 map, drawn by Republicans, nonwhites make up a majority of residents in two Philadelphia-based congressional districts. In the new map, people of color appear to be the majority in only one district, he said. “In general, I think the new map is a really big win for democracy in Pennsylvania,” Sims said. “However, we want to make sure that it is not disenfranchising voters, particularly in Philadelphia.”

Pennsylvania: Republican challenge to Pennsylvania map likely to fail | Politico

President Donald Trump wants Pennsylvania Republicans to fight the implementation of a court-drawn congressional map that threatens a half-dozen GOP-held seats this November, but most operatives and experts see little hope in a legal challenge to the new districts. Republicans in Harrisburg and Washington say they’re moving ahead with legal action to stop the new map. But, behind the scenes, Republican consultants are already urging their clients to get ready for these new districts in 2018. “I’m advising my clients to prepare for the worst-case scenario: that these are the maps this year,” said Mark Harris, a Republican consultant based in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania: Republicans to sue as soon as Wednesday to block redistricted map | The Morning Call

Republicans will file suit to block the new map of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts as soon as Wednesday, officials said. Matt Gorman, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Tuesday state and federal officials “will sue in federal court as soon as tomorrow to prevent the new partisan map from taking effect.” Top Senate Republican lawyer Drew Crompton said Monday a separation of powers case will form the essence of the GOP’s argument, according to The Associated Press. Republicans again will argue the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures and governors, not courts, the power to draw congressional boundaries, AP reported.

Pennsylvania: The Math Behind Pennsylvania’s Gerrymandered Map Getting Overturned | WIRED

The morning John Kennedy was set to testify last December, he woke up at 1:30 am, in an unfamiliar hotel room in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He’d never gone to court before for anything serious, much less taken the stand. Some time after sunrise, he headed to the courthouse, dressed in a gray Brooks Brothers suit, and spent the next several hours reviewing his notes and frantically pacing the halls. “I think I made a groove in the floor,” Kennedy says. By 3:30 pm, it was finally time. Kennedy’s answers started off slowly, as he worked to steady his nerves. Then, about an hour into his testimony, Exhibit 81 flashed on a screen inside the courtroom. It was a map of part of Pennsylvania’s seventh congressional district, but it might as well have been a chalk outline of a body. “It was like a crime scene,” explains Daniel Jacobson, an attorney for Arnold & Porter, which represented the League of Women Voters in its bid to overturn Pennsylvania’s 2011 electoral map, drawn by the state’s majority Republican General Assembly. The edges of the district skitter in all manner of unnatural directions, drawing comparisons to a sketch of Goofy kicking Donald Duck.

Pennsylvania: State Supreme Court releases new congressional map for 2018 elections | Philadelphia Inquirer

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday released a new congressional district map to be used for the 2018 elections for U.S. House seats.Its plan splits only 13 counties. Of those, four counties are split into three districts and nine are split into two districts. By contrast the most recent map, enacted in 2011, split 28 counties. It also includes significant changes to the state map, including dividing Philadelphia into only two congressional districts; currently three House members represent parts of the city. In another win for local Democrats, the fourth district is centered on Montgomery County. Critics of the map adopted in 2011 often pointed to Montgomery County, which was split into five districts in that plan and had no member of congress living in the county. Bucks, Chester, and Delaware counties also receive districts based largely on their areas.

Pennsylvania: The New Pennsylvania House Districts Are In | The New York Times

Perhaps no event will do more to reshape the fight for control of the House than the new congressional map just released by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. At stake was the fate of a Republican gerrymander that intended to cement a 13-5 Republican advantage in an evenly divided state. Now the Republicans will have little to no advantage at all. Democrats couldn’t have asked for much more from the new map. It’s arguably even better for them than the maps they proposed themselves. Over all, a half-dozen competitive Republican-held congressional districts move to the left, endangering several incumbent Republicans, one of whom may now be all but doomed to defeat, and improving Democratic standing in two open races. Based on recent election results, the new congressional map comes very close to achieving partisan balance.

Pennsylvania: State Moves Back Towards Paper Ballots | CBS

Pennsylvania is taking steps to increase security on all voting systems used in the commonwealth. From here moving forward, all voting systems bought for Pennsylvania must have a voter-verifiable paper record of votes cast. Marian Schneider of Verified Voting, an organization which promotes accuracy and transparency in voting, says this is an important step. “The reason that having a paper record of voter intent is because paper cannot be altered by software,” she said.

Pennsylvania: The governor of Pennsylvania rejects Republicans’ new map | The Economist

The best thing that can be said about a new Republican-drawn congressional map for Pennsylvania is that none of the districts resembles a cartoon character. But erasing the lines of a comically gerrymandered district dubbed “Goofy kicking Donald Duck” was not enough to satisfy an order from Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, said Tom Wolf, the state’s Democratic governor, on February 13th. When the court ruled on January 22nd that the map in use since 2011 was an extreme partisan gerrymander that violates Pennsylvania’s constitution, it gave legislators until February 9th to send Mr Wolf a fairer map. The redrawn districts, the court advised, should be “composed of compact and contiguous territory” and should not gratuitously divide cities and counties. Curiously, the initial order said nothing about fixing the map’s skew toward Republican candidates, which has afforded their party a reliable 13-to-5 advantage in a state with more registered Democrats than Republicans.

Pennsylvania: Governor rejects proposed redistricting map from GOP lawmakers | The Hill

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) on Tuesday rejected a new district map drawn by GOP lawmakers, bringing the state closer to handing its redistricting process over to a court. The GOP map was drawn after the state Supreme Court struck down the state’s current congressional map in a gerrymandering case. Wolf’s press office confirmed that the governor told Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court that he won’t approve the new congressional lines on the grounds that it’s a “partisan gerrymander that does not comply with the court’s order” or state constitution. “Partisan gerrymandering weakens citizen power, promotes gridlock and stifles meaningful reform,” Wolf said in a statement. “As non-partisan analysts have already said, their map maintains a similar partisan advantage by employing many of the same unconstitutional tactics present in their 2011 map.”

Pennsylvania: State Supreme Court gives a blueprint to strike down partisan gerrymandering. | Slate

On Wednesday night, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finally released its majority opinion explaining why Republicans’ gerrymander of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts violates the state constitution. (On Jan. 22, the court had issued a brief order directing the Legislature to redraw the illegal districts without fully explaining its reasoning.) Justice Debra McCloskey Todd’s 139-page opinion for the court is thorough and persuasive—and, critically, its reasoning isn’t entirely limited to Pennsylvania. Instead, Todd illustrates how dozens of other state constitutions may be interpreted to protect voting rights more robustly than the U.S. Constitution does. Her decision will arm activists in every state with a powerful new tool in the fight against political redistricting.

Pennsylvania: Republicans have drawn a new congressional map that is just as gerrymandered as the old one – The Washington Post

Last month the Pennsylvania Supreme Court instructed the state’s Republican-led legislature to draw a new congressional map after finding the existing one was an illegal partisan gerrymander that violated voters’ right to participate in “free and equal elections.” On Friday, Republican leaders in the legislature submitted their new map for the governor’s approval. As directed by the Supreme Court, the new map is much more compact than the old one. Gone are the infamous convolutions that characterized the old map, earning nicknames such as “Goofy kicking Donald Duck.” The new districts generally respect county and municipal boundaries and don’t “wander seemingly arbitrarily across Pennsylvania,” as the state’s Supreme Court wrote. Unfortunately for Pennsylvania voters, the new districts show just as much partisan bias as the old ones. #url#

Pennsylvania: GOP proposes a new congressional map. Democrats say it’s still gerrymandered | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A proposed new map of Pennsylvania congressional districts may have sanded off some of the rougher edges of the current version, but it still amounts to a pro-Republican gerrymander, a chorus of Democrats complained Saturday as they urged Gov. Tom Wolf to reject it. The governor, whose administration is combing through the proposal with the advice of a prominent mathematics professor, is expected to announce his position on the new map early this week.

Pennsylvania: Governor wants a paper trail on all voting machines, but money is an issue | Digital Trends

The term “voter fraud” seemed to be as ubiquitous as the candidates’ names in the 2016 presidential race, and now Pennsylvania is hoping to do something about it. On Friday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf ordered counties planning on replacing their electronic voting systems with machines that would maintain a paper trail, with hopes to guard against interference in a future election. According to the governor’s office, these new systems will improve the security of voting systems, and will also simplify the process of auditing votes. The addition of the paper backup is, in some ways, an antiquated yet effective solution to a decidedly modern problem.