A d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu battle over districts<\/p>\n
A partisan battle over congressional districts developed last year. In August, Texas\u2019 Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, following pressure from President Donald Trump, approved a new map<\/a> designed to give his party an opportunity to gain five House seats. Other Republican-led states \u2014 including Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Utah \u2014 have followed suit<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n That led to states led by Democrats to retaliate, including California<\/a>, New York and Virginia, though New York and Virginia\u2019s<\/a> efforts were quashed by courts.\n<\/p>\n At the press conference, Mackenzie, who is still in his first term, said that \u201cpragmatic solutions\u201d such as the anti-gerrymandering proposal require bipartisanship.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe American people deserve confidence that our elections are conducted on an even playing field and the congressional districts are drawn to represent communities, not to benefit individuals and their parties,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n He also cited an instance when Pennsylvania congressional district maps drawn by a Republican-led legislature in 2011 were challenged<\/a> and the state Supreme Court annulled them in 2018.\n<\/p>\n Mackenzie accused the state Supreme Court of \u201cstepping in midterm,\u201d saying they \u201cunilaterally redrew maps and it threw our elections and the electoral process for voters, candidates and others into total chaos.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Although the state was nearly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, under the map, Republicans won 13 out of 18 of districts in the commonwealth. Democrats and voting rights advocates challenged the old map, calling it the \u201cworst\u201d gerrymandered<\/a> in the nation as they took their claims to state and federal courts<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n The state Supreme Court agreed, ruling just days after hearing oral arguments in the case, that the Republican map \u201cclearly, plainly and palpably<\/a>\u201d violated the state constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court declined a Republican appeal<\/a> to overrule the state court.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu battle over districts A partisan battle over congressional districts developed last year. In August, Texas\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7720,28,30,29,119802],"class_list":["post-288101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-gerrymandering","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-u-s-rep-brian-fitzpatrick"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}