Chester County Medicine Summer 2021 - 26

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Politics & Medicine
Reapportionment of
PA's Congressional Districts
I
BY LARRY L. LIGHT
n the aftermath of the tumultuous 2020 election
cycle, a recurring political exercise will take center
stage. Reapportionment, and to a lesser extent
gerrymandering, are the political buzz words that
will be in the news on a regular basis until our next
General Election in 2022.
Most readers will know that congressional reapportionment
is the realignment of the 435 seats in the
US House of Representatives undertaken every 10
years. The laudable purpose is assuring that the 435
congressional seats are equitably distributed among
the 50 states after the 10-year census is completed.
For the states and for federal level policy makers, the
political process of reapportionment is inherently a
high stakes political problem.
Each state uses the decennial census data to draw their new
congressional districts. To make it more interesting, those drawing
the new congressional district boundaries may have to either reduce
or increase the number of districts in their state. And then it gets
even better because state legislative districts must also be reapportioned.
Add to the mix the intent to create politically safe districts,
swing districts, districts that will induce the retirement of certain
members or pair incumbents from different (or the same) parties in
a winner take all scenario and it is a political exercise of potentially
very dangerous outcomes. The final incendiary element is that the
total population in each congressional district has a
zero-deviation standard. In Pennsylvania the mapmakers
must draw 17 districts that vary no more than plus
or minus 1 person from the average of 761,169 people
per district for this cycle.
In Pennsylvania the political subdivisions (counties,
cities, boroughs, townships and wards) that will
comprise each congressional district are specified in
state legislation that must be passed by both chambers
of the General Assembly and then signed by the
Governor. In 2018 the legal process of challenging
the reapportionment of 2012 became a national news
story when the PA State Supreme Court ruled that the
existing congressional map was unconstitutionally gerrymandered.
The court found, among other things, that there were
too many split municipalities in the districts and that the resulting
map was gerrymandered to give one party a disproportional political
advantage.
The political division in the state was evident, as Republicans
controlled the General Assembly and held the Governor's office
that enacted the legislation (and the congressional district map)
and Democrats controlled the Supreme Court that later threw out
the map. The court then imposed a new map that split far fewer
political subdivisions and was viewed as more fairly drawn. Since, in
2022, we have a Democratic Governor who can veto the legislation
26 CHESTER COUNTY Medicine | SUMMER 2021
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Chester County Medicine Summer 2021

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