Redistricting PA?

[minionofmidas]

  109th Congressional District Summary Files 

Population and Housing Characteristics for the Congressional Districts of the 109th Congress. Files provide Census 2000 data summaries for the newly defined boundaries of the 109th Congress. Statistics on 100-percent and sample population and housing subjects are presented for all states, District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Geographic areas include, but are not limited to the following entities with congressional districts: county; county subdivision; place, state portion of American Indian and Alaska Native area (with trust lands and with no trust lands) and Hawaiian home land. Please note that Maine, Pennsylvania, and Texas were redrawn for the 109th Congress and represent new plans from what is displayed in the 108th Congressional District products. For the 109th Congress, all other states remain the same as displayed in the 108th Congressional District products.

(...)

Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Public Information Office
(301) 763-3030
Author: pio@census.gov
Last Revised: January 11, 2005 at 02:20:04 PM
 

Pennsylvania was redrawn between 2002 and 2004??? What's that about?

[Keystone Phil]

We just keep losing more and more people. I love debating PA 13 and will continue but I hope that when we are redrawn that my street gets thrown across the border to PA 8.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Pennsylvania was redrawn between 2002 and 2004??? What's that about?

There was a legal challange to the evil map and it certainly should have been redrawn, but I don't think it actually was.

[minionofmidas]

Pennsylvania was redrawn between 2002 and 2004??? What's that about?

There was a legal challange to the evil map and it certainly should have been redrawn, but I don't think it actually was.

Obviously there cannot have been much of a change, otherwise it'd be public knowledge...maybe there were just a couple of blocks exchanged between two districts or something...I'd check on the Census website, but the "American Fact Finder" seems to be down, so I figured I'd ask here.

[Jake]

Hey, did anyone see the map that had Luzerne County split between Holden, Gekas, and Sherwood.  Great plan

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Here's Maine.

2003-2004:


Now:

[minionofmidas]

Maine has some archaic rules about session periods and primary filing deadlines that make it impossible to redistrict in time for the 2002 elections. Thence the change there.

[jimrtex]

Please note that Maine, Pennsylvania, and Texas were redrawn for the 109th Congress and represent new plans from what is displayed in the 108th Congressional District products.[/b] For the 109th Congress, all other states remain the same as displayed in the 108th Congressional District products.

Pennsylvania was redrawn between 2002 and 2004??? What's that about?

See Redistricting cases: the 2000s.

The original Pennsylvania plan (Act 1) passed in January 2002, had a 19-person deviation between the populations of districts.  It was challenged as a political gerrymander, and the deviation was cited among many reasons.  The courts agreed with the plaintiffs on equal protection grounds, and enjoined use of the Act 1 plan, gave the legislature 3 weeks to fix it, and deferred on issuing its own plan.

In April 2002, the legislature passed a revised plan (Act 34) which reduced the deviation to 1 person.  The court stayed their original order, allowing the Act 1 plan to be used for the 2002 election only, pending review of the Act 34 plan for future elections.  The Act 34 plan was eventually approved by the courts, up through the US Supreme Court in
PDF: Vieth v. Jubelirer or HTML: Vieth v. Jubelirer

Note that Vieth forms the basis of the remand by the USSC to the Federal District Court of the Texas Legislature's districting plan based on the 2000 Census.  The ruling by the USSC in Vieth was last summer, while the Federal District Court had made their ruling in the Texas case in late 2003.

In Vieth, 4 justices argued that in 20 years of looking, they had never found a justiciable standard for illegal political gerrymandering, and it was unlikely that one would ever be found.  One judge agreed that they hadn't found anything in 20 years, there wasn't anything in the Pennsylvania districting plan, but maybe just maybe that there might be something in some other case.

In the Texas case, the USSC judges were apparently split, with some not wanting to take the case.  After a few weeks of delays, they finally issued their order remanding the case to the Federal District Court.

[minionofmidas]

So...are there any serious changes to the map? Or is it just a few cases of a census tract here, a census tract there?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

It went to the US Supreme Court, where the 5 partisan Republicans voted to keep the gerrymander, and the other 4 voted to get rid of it.

[The Dowager Mod]

We just keep losing more and more people. I love debating PA 13 and will continue but I hope that when we are redrawn that my street gets thrown across the border to PA 8.

That's what happened to me after wisconsin redrew.
i went from cd-1 to cd-2 my neighbor is still cd-1

[TeePee4Prez]

Funny with NE Philly.  The whole thing was old PA 3.  My house I grew up in was PA 3, which was represented by Robert Borski.  Due to gerrymandering, it's now Bob Brady's dsitrict, now PA 1.  PA 1 used to be South Philly and parts of Center City and Delaware County. 

[jimrtex]

So...are there any serious changes to the map? Or is it just a few cases of a census tract here, a census tract there?

I compared state outline maps and didn't see any differences.  The difference between the largest and smallest district under the original plan was only 19 persons.  Some of the others might have been right on the target population.  If you are willing to split voting precincts, all you have to do is find a few blocks and shift them around.

[Kevinstat]

Here's Maine.

Now:

The two districts aren't as neatly shaped as the lack of out-of-state attention to the redistricting (apart from noting that and questioning why it occurs two years late, and Lewis Trondheim's post, even if it is just reasoning, matches what I had suspected as the reason*) would indicate.  I think the portion of the first district within Kennebec County looks like the head of a beast that you might see in a children's story, although I should admit that the town of Litchfield behind the 'chin' of the beast is in a school district with a couple towns in Androscoggin County (where you see the word "Sagadahoc" with a line leading to the actual Sagadahoc County).  Also, Unity Township at the tip of the beast's 'horn' may use the same polling place as Albion further down the horn, since they've been in all the same districts since at least the 1994 elections.

One thing few people notice is that the town of Isle Au Haut at the eastern end of Knox County (it's that not-circular but not exacly skinny little island that's east of two other larger islands that themselves are east of the Knox County mainland) is not connected by ferry to the rest of Knox County but to the town of Stonington at the southern end of the larger island to its north, which itself is connected to the mainland via a smaller island by a pair of bridges along a state route.  To get from Portland to Isle Au Haut, by public road or ferry, one would have to travel up the coast (or perhaps through Augusta, where the road to Belfast along Penobscot Bay now starts at I-95 rather than on the other side of the Kennebec River and the most crowded part of the city, although one would probably want to meet other constituents in Knox and Lincoln Counties along the way) as far as where U.S. Route 1 crosses the Penobscot River (the southernmost bridge across said river, which you can see on the map), then down the Penninsula on the other side to Stonington where one could take the ferry to Isle Au Haut.  Perhaps becuase a big deal seems to be made in Maine about dividing only one county, and a county besides Knox has been divided since the 1983 redistricting, Isle Au Haut has remained in the first district, although the town was moved from the Senate District including most of Knox County to one otherwise entirely in Hancock County, where Stonington lies, in the 2003 redistricting.

*Interestingly enough, I'm almost certain that the filing deadline for candidates of qualified parties (which is now earlier than the one for Unenrolled candidates) was later, sometime in April at the earliest (that's when Senator George Mitchell annouced he was not running for reelection in 1994, and several Democrats, including the eventual winner and now Governor John Baldacci, were on the primary ballot for Congress who were not planning on running until after then-Congresswoman Olympia Snowe announced for the unexpectedly open Senate seat, while at least three dems seem to have been already running - and in the first district, someone who urged Jim Longley Jr. to run against Democratic Congressman Tom Andrews ended up running against Longley in the Republican primary after Andrews announced for Mitchell's seat - those two filing deadlines would certainly not have been extended due to Mitchell's withdrawal from the Senate race).  If the length of the filing period for major-party candidates were reduced by pushing back the start of the filing period for all candidates rather than moving the filing deadling for major-party candidates to March 15, there would have been at least some time in the "2" year, in addition to perhaps a couple months in the "1" year (I think the odd-year legislative session usually ends in June, and I remember that the full census numbers in terms of population came in either in March of April of 2001, I forget which) for the legislature to redistrict.  Still, the old filing deadline might have been less than a month later than the current deadline (I'm not sure when in April Mitchell announced his impending retirement, and with all the exitement that was generated it might not have taken long for members of Congress to collect the required number of signatures for a Senate run and for state legislators and others with political connections, including a close relative of Senator Mitchell's who had previously chaired the state Democratic Party, to collect the required number of signatures for the two congressional seats), so pushing the start of the filing period back by a comperable amont might not have made much of a difference in the guarunteed ability of the legislature (or the state Supreme Judicial Court, if necessary) to redistrict in time for the "2"-year election.

I am getting tired of writing all this, plus I don't want to lose anything, so I am going to post what I have written.  I may later speculate on future Maine redistricting, if people express interest.

Sincerely,

Kevin Lamoreau