Elections
with no competition
By Timothy Potts, June 12, 2008,
Courier Times Guest Opinion
Six years ago it was obvious that Pennsylvania's system for drawing the boundaries of legislative districts was broken. Lawsuits sought to toss it, but our ever-compliant
Supreme Court once again let legislative leaders mock the plain language of the Constitution, disenfranchising millions of
voters and giving Pennsylvania the second most gerrymandered districts in America, behind only Georgia.
Six years later, the news isn't much better. Two weeks ago, House State
Government Committee Chair Babette Josephs, D-Phila., refused to allow the committee to discuss a consensus proposal (HB 2420)
that had 92 co-sponsors, including Josephs herself. [See letters from Babette Josephs.]
Last week, the minority chair of the Senate State Government Committee,
Anthony Williams, D-Phila., succeeded at having similar legislation (SB 346) tabled.
Josephs explained her tactic by saying that the agency designated to
draw the new boundaries a) couldn't do the job, and b) couldn't remain free of corruption if it did. The agency is the Legislative
Reference Bureau (LRB), which has a 100-year-plus record of non-partisanship.
There are at least two problems with Josephs' defense. First, no one
is asking the LRB to do the job now. It would have three years to prepare.
Second, it's precisely the LRB's record of non-partisanship that makes
it a worthy nominee. If they can do it for 100 years, they're probably professional enough to do it again.
Others share Josephs' concern that the LRB, whose employees are appointed
by legislative leaders, ultimately would be corrupted by that relationship.
It's a rare confession about the culture of corruption, and Josephs might
get away with it if only she had proposed an alternative. Or if she simply advanced another state-of-the-art proposal by Rep.
Tom Tangretti, D-Westmoreland, that has been sitting in her committee without actionfor a year and five months.
In typical Capitol fashion, the Josephs and Williams procedures gave
lawmakers a two-fer.
Not only did they prevent action as the June 23 deadline approaches,
but they did it in a way that allows every lawmaker to claim that he or she never voted against the actual legislation.
Currently, legislative leaders are empowered to draw the boundaries,
a conflict of interest so blatant that it repels anyone with a shred of ethical grounding.
The results were and still are bad news for democracy because they produce
elections where there is no competition.
Defenders of the status quo claim that the system adopted after the Constitutional
convention of 1967 has resulted in a majority (103) of House seats changing from Republican to Democrat (or vice versa).
But that also means that in 40 years, the party elected to 100 House
seats has not changed. Which is remarkable considering how many events with huge political implications occurred during those
40 years, including three wars, two energy crises, Watergate, the Reagan Revolution, high-ranking state legislators going
to jail, and the ever-popular Pay Raise of 2005.
Yet 100 House seats didn't change political hands.
Defenders of the status quo claim that the lack of competition occurs
because voters are happy with the performance of incumbents.
First, there hasn't been much performance. Second, there has been no
performance at all on many issues (both policy issues and governance issues) that citizens care about.
In truth, our political leaders have stacked the deck in so many parts
of the state that more than half of November's elections (113 out of 203 in the House and 19 out of 25 in the Senate) will
be as meaningless as elections in the old Soviet Union.
This may be good for political leaders, but it's not good for governance
and not good for citizens. And it's not the democratic system lawmakers take an oath to protect.
Tim Potts is director of Democracy Rising Pennsylvania. E-mail: Tim@democracyrisingpa.com.
Article's URL: http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/322-06122008-1547960.html 
