Pennsylvania's 15th Congressional District, of which Lower Pottsgrove is a part.
HARRISBURG PA – Now that the 2010 U.S. Census is complete and its results issued, the first shots have been fired in Pennsylvania over what critics claim is a “flawed system” for Congressional and state legislative redistricting “seriously in need of reform,” The Pennsylvania Independent online news service reported Thursday (Jan. 13, 2011).
Lower Pottsgrove's congressman, Rep. Charlie Dent, sits in a UPS delivery truck during a visit to the company's operations in Allentown.
And the battle holds significance for Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township residents.
The League of Women Voters (LWV), Common Cause Pennsylvania, and Democracy Rising Pennsylvania held a joint news conference Thursday at the state Capitol to propose a series of changes aimed at making the process more transparent, non-partisan and non-political. Olivia Thorne, LWV president, told The Independent redistricting “will be the most politically contentious issue facing Pennsylvania in 2011.”
Lower Pottsgrove is part of the state’s 15th Congressional District, the bulk of which consists primarily of Northampton and Lehigh counties, and small parts of Montgomery and Berks counties. As a result, detractors say, the township is wrongly aligned with the interests of the greater Allentown area, rather than those of its natural neighbors, Pottstown and Limerick, in Montgomery County.
District lines are re-drawn every decade, following the Census, to ensure all residents are adequately represented in the U.S. House as well as in their state capitals. Pennsylvania’s constitution requires only that districts should have an equal number of residents, should be contiguous, and should not divide existing municipalities.
Those limitations, however, do little to prevent or impede the creation of district boundaries that favor the re-election chances of incumbent politicians. Carving out districts whose voters are likely to support a specific political ideology or candidate is a process known as gerrymandering. When lines were set during 2000, some charged that Republican-leaning Lower Pottsgrove was gerrymandered into the 15th District to support GOP candidates.
The district is represented by Republican Congressman Charlie Dent, who easily won re-election in November (2010).
The league is urging lawmakers “to make all data used in drafting the redistricting plan open to the public,” and wants to encourage mapmakers “to disregard information such as voter registration changes, voting history and demographic shifts,” according to The Independent.
A commission of five individuals, most of them legislative caucus leaders, is responsible for redrawing the state House and state Senate districts. The congressional map must be approved by both houses of the General Assembly and by governor-elect Tom Corbett.
Photo from Rep. Charlie Dent; map from Wikimedia Commons
Gerrymandering our representation, we have nothing in common with Easton and that area to the north of us. Typically areas such as ours get poor representation and little in the way of political clout as we are nothing to these reps.
We need to push for law that will stop this manipulation and make this redistriciting effort sensical…