A diverse coalition of pro-democracy advocates and lawmakers gathered in Harrisburg Tuesday in support of two bills which would create a “fair districting” amendment to the state constitution.
Around 60 supporters turned out to hear brief speeches from the bills’ bipartisan sponsors — State Senator Tim Kearney (D-Delaware), State Representative Steve Samuelson (D-Northampton), and State Representative Mark Gillen (R-Berks) — all of whom want to create an independent redistricting commission and ban prison gerrymandering.
“Pennsylvania voters want fair districts,” said Sen. Kearney. Rep. Gillen echoed the sentiment from across the political aisle, calling badly gerrymandered maps “indefensible,” stating bluntly, “this process must be changed.”
Other speakers included leaders of advocacy groups, including Philip Hensley-Robin of Common Cause Pennsylvania, Amy Widestrom of League of Women Voters Pennsylvania, Lauren Cristella of The Committee of 70, and Carol Kuniholm of Fair Districts PA.
“Pennsylvanians have watched as political maps were drawn behind closed doors by those who stand to gain the most money. This has eroded trust in our democracy and left people, especially those who are already marginalized, feeling underrepresented,” said Sen. Kearney. “This commission will be a major step forward in ensuring that the maps are drawn for the people, not for the politicians.”
The lawmakers are preparing introduce House Bill 31 and Senate Bill 31 (named for the next redistricting year in 2031), which would update the state’s constitution to establish an independent citizens redistricting commission tasked with drawing state legislative and congressional districts. Rather than politicians redrawing maps to benefit their party, ordinary citizens would comprise an independent redistricting commission.
According to the Senate Bill’s co-sponsorship memo, “In total there will be eleven commissioners who will serve on the independent redistricting commission. The first six members of the commission will be selected by lottery, two from the largest political party, two from the second largest political party, and two from a pool of unaffiliated and independent voters. These newly selected members will be tasked with choosing the remaining five commissioners, two from the largest political party, two from the second largest political party, and one from a pool of unaffiliated and independent voters.”
The bills call for safeguards to ensure that the commissioners are free of political bias — for example, they cannot have served in the governing body of a political party or have been an employee of a political campaign.
“The citizens of Pennsylvania believe that we should have a redistricting process that creates districts that are compact, districts that are contiguous, districts that respect municipal boundaries, districts that respect natural boundaries, districts that aren’t drawn favoring one political party or another,” said Rep. Samuelson.
Philip Hensley-Robin, executive director of the Pennsylvania chapter of Common Cause, a national organization which supports reform to ensure fair elections across the country, said PA’s recent history includes “some of the worst gerrymandered districts in the country,” adding that “in a strong and healthy democracy, voters choose our representatives, but today we see too many power hungry politicians draw gerrymandered maps to silence voters.”
Hensley-Robin said that these changes laid out in the bills are desperately needed to prevent partisan gerrymandering in 2031 and beyond, while also noting that states such as Colorado, Arizona, and Michigan have already taken similar measures to establish independent redistricting commissions.
“At the heart of that mission is the pursuit of fair and transparent redistricting and electoral processes designed to expand our electorate and make our democracy more representative,” said League of Women Voters Pennsylvania Executive Director Widestrom. “Gerrymandering undermines public trust in the public process and distorts political representation. That’s why the league has worked tirelessly to advance reforms.”
The second goal of the constitutional amendment is to eliminate “prison gerrymandering,” an archaic means of tallying a legislative district’s population numbers. Prison gerrymandering refers to the practice of counting prison inmates as members of a legislative district’s population, despite the fact that they rarely live in the district and many cannot vote at all. This has the effect of adding extra weight to districts with prison populations, while reducing the weight of districts with higher numbers of incarcerated people. Hensley-Robin called prison gerrymandering an “egregious process” and “deeply unjust.”
“A growing body of research suggests that gerrymandered voting districts lead to polarization, legislative dysfunction, gridlock and increasing voter frustration.”
Prison gerrymandering exacerbates existing racial disparities in voting power and the criminal justice system. Racially diverse urban areas have the highest numbers of incarcerated individuals, so prison gerrymandering serves to shrink the voting power of communities of color. On the other end, the practice transfers power to many rural areas which tend to house Pennsylvania’s prisons and are often racially homogenous.
Prison gerrymandering is shockingly reminiscent of the South during the days of slavery, when the Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787 was the law of the land. Under this constitutional provision (repealed in 1868 by the fourteenth amendment), enslaved African Americans counted toward the population for voting purposes, despite being considered non-citizens who had no political say whatsoever. This unjust practice has no place in contemporary society and should be roundly condemned, regardless of one’s political persuasion.
“A growing body of research suggests that gerrymandered voting districts lead to polarization, legislative dysfunction, gridlock and increasing voter frustration,” said Fair Districts PA Chair Kuniholm. “Repeated surveys show strong support for redistricting reform from all parties and all demographics.”
READ: Pennsylvania Legislative Preview: Will Long-Discussed Election Proposals Finally Get Through?
Indeed, many states in recent years have banned prison gerrymandering. The most recent state is Minnesota, which enacted legislation outlawing the practice in May 2024. Should Pennsylvania’s fair districting amendment pass, however, our state would become the first to ban the practice via constitutional amendment.
Although these bills face an uphill battle this legislative session – especially in the state senate — Hensley-Robin expressed optimism that support for fair redistricting in Pennsylvania will accelerate in the coming years. He pointed to the bills’ bipartisan co-sponsors, as well as polls which show a large percentage of Pennsylvanians across the political aisle oppose partisan gerrymandering, as positive trends. Representative Samuelson championed a petition sponsored by Common Cause and the Committee of 70 in which 102,000 Pennsylvanians expressed support for fair redistricting.
Hensley-Robin said Pennsylvanians can get involved in fair redistricting efforts by talking directly to their state legislators and voicing their concerns about the impact of political gerrymandering in the commonwealth. He also urges anyone interested to join and support organizations like the ones who organized Tuesday’s rally, all of whom remain committed to fighting for election reform.
