Ligonier approves resolution to support anti-gerrymandering bill

Ligonier officials joined more than 362 municipalities and 24 counties across the state, signing onto resolutions asking the General Assembly to pass a bill outlawing gerrymandering.

The small borough in Eastern Westmoreland County last week joined only two other Westmoreland municipalities—North Huntingdon and Trafford— that have gone on record in support of LACRA, the Legislative and Congressional Redistricting Act now pending before the legislature.

In nearby Allegheny County, county council and local officials in 20 municipalities, including the City of Pittsburgh, have adopted resolutions supporting LACRA. The legislation that remains stalled in the Legislature was designed to upend the closed door processes that landed Pennsylvania a reputation as one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation, culminating in the state Supreme Court overturning the 2011 Congressional district map.

Karen Calhoun, who heads Fair Districts PA’s efforts to end gerrymandering in the Somerset/Westmoreland County region said the support resolutions filed to date represent communities that include 4.1 million Pennsylvanians, or a little under a third of the state’s residents.

Beaver County and 10 Beaver municipalities as well as the city of Butler and Cranberry round out the list of Southwestern Pennsylvania communities that passed such resolutions.

Ligonier’s vote last week came on the heels of a letter from a group of local residents. The letter reminded official that the state’s reapportionment commission is about to embark on the task of realigning congressional and legislative districts to reflect the results of the 2020 Census. The process could spell major changes across Southwestern Pennsylvania, which lost population over the last decade, even as communities in the eastern part of the state grew.

The Ligonier citizens’ group included two dozen local residents. They warned that anything short of an open process designed to create compact contiguous districts that are equal in population and avoid splitting municipalities could end up diluting voters’ voices.

“These new voting maps will define Pennsylvania’s congressional and state legislative districts for the next ten years,” they wrote. “Pennsylvania’s reputation for gerrymandering — the manipulation of voting district maps to favor one political party over others — is among the worst in the US. Both Democrats and Republicans have done it; it has gone on for decades; and the practice needs to end in 2021. Gerrymandering heightens partisanship and subverts our democratic system of representation in ways that are bad for citizens, communities, government bodies, businesses, and economic health.”

The latest resolution comes as the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, a five-member panel consisting of four lawmakers — two Democrats and two Republicans — and the Commission’s Chair, Pitt Chancellor Emeritus Mark Nordenberg, prepare to begin a series of public hearings on the remapping process this summer.