Draw The Lines Pa Releases First-Ever Pennsylvania Citizens’ Map Of Congressional Districts

Philadelphia, PA, September 8, 2021 – Draw the Lines PA, an initiative of the Committee of 70, today released the Pennsylvania Citizens’ Map, a proposed map of 17 congressional districts that reflects the work of more than 7,200 Pennsylvanians who have already drawn 1,500 congressional maps through competitions held since 2018. Thanks to advances in publicly available software, this is the first such map that has ever been created by citizens. Accompanying the map is a narrative that tells the story of each of the 17 districts and outlines the process used by citizens, and Draws the Lines (DTL) to draft the Citizens’ Map. The DTL site has a comment section for the public to provide their feedback to the map of which members of the public are encouraged to take advantage.
The 7,200 citizen mappers come from 40 of the Commonwealth’s 67 counties, representing almost 90% of the population. Mappers range from a 14-year-old State College High School student to college students from institutions across the Commonwealth to senior citizens. Each mapper’s congressional map was scored on common mapping metrics with free online software (DTL used both DistrictBuilder and Dave’s Redistricting). Draw the Lines took the scores of the fully completed 1,500 citizen maps and used them as benchmark goals by which to draw this Citizens’ Map – so the map, in effect, represents the choices of the composite citizen mapper.
“The Pennsylvania Citizens’ Map makes clear what so many Pennsylvanians already know: that drawing fair districts is neither an activity that should take place behind closed doors nor an exercise that should take months on end,” said David Thornburgh, Chair of Draw the Lines PA and President and CEO of the Committee of 70. “We’re not suggesting this is a perfect map, but it certainly sets the table for discussion. There is no reason why the Legislature should be delayed in drafting our new congressional map and sharing it soon for comment with the citizens of PA. If we can do it, they can do it.”
The 2020 Census data shows that Pennsylvania’s population has not kept pace with the rest of the nation, so Pennsylvania will lose a congressional seat, going from 18 to 17 districts. Within the state, population centers have shifted south-central and southeast, meaning the new map will need to be adjusted accordingly.
The following common mapping metrics were used to develop the Citizens’ Map:
Equal population: It is standard practice that congressional districts have the exact same number of people, down to the person, to avoid court challenges on the basis of “one person, one vote.” Although this map essentially meets the zero deviation standard, Draw the Lines strongly believes maps should allow for a slightly larger deviation (less than 1%), to ensure that voting precincts are not split. The Citizens’ Map has a total deviation of ten people.
Contiguous and compact: Two additional values that mattered significantly to DTL mappers were contiguous and compact districts, values cited by the State Supreme Court as necessary and codified in the Pennsylvania Constitution for the drawing of state legislative districts. Each district of DTL’s Citizens’ Map is contiguous. Further, the Citizens’ Map achieves compactness scores markedly better than the map Pennsylvania adopted in 2011, the last time the General Assembly drew the lines.
Jurisdictional splits: Avoiding jurisdictional splits unless necessary to achieve population balance is part of the opinion issued by the State Supreme Court in its 2018 decision. Doing so has a number of benefits: it makes election administration easier for county officials, it minimizes confusion among residents and voters about who represents them, and it keeps recognized communities together to ensure their votes matter. The Citizen’s Map splits 14 counties, equaling the 14 splits in the 2018 map, and is a significant improvement to the 28 counties that were split in the 2011 congressional map.
Compliance with Voting Rights Act: To adhere to the Voting Rights Act, which protects the power of minority communities to elect office-holders who will represent them and their needs, Districts 2 and 3 in the Citizens’ Map are majority-minority districts. District 2 is a coalition district (29% Black, 22% Hispanic, 10% Asian), while District 3 is 55%, Black.
Competitiveness: Throughout the Draw the Lines competition, Pennsylvanians demonstrated their desire for districts that allow for competitive elections. The Citizens’ Map, using election data from 2012-2018, creates five districts that will likely be highly competitive (Democratic and Republican votes are within 10% of each other). In the three elections from 2012-2016 under the old map, each election averaged only one such competitive district.
Communities of Interest: Districts in the Citizens’ Map also value the regional trends that the DTL team noticed while studying these 1,500 maps. For example, the map prioritizes keeping together places like the Lehigh Valley, the Laurel Highlands, culturally distinct neighborhoods in Philadelphia, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area, the Susquehanna Valley, the Capital Region, the I-79 corridor south from Erie, and most of the Pennsylvania Wilds.
Incumbency: While the locations of incumbent members of Congress were a value almost universally rejected by DTL mappers, the Citizens’ Map does factor in these locations. Realistically, the national parties will prioritize this value, and any map produced by the public that doesn’t factor in incumbent locations will be a non-starter in the General Assembly.
Any Pennsylvanian can view and provide their own comments to the map on drawthelinespa.org. Draw the Lines will be sharing those comments with the General Assembly, and DTL will encourage commenters to do the same.
The PA Citizens’ Map released today follows Draw the Lines’ release of its Roadmap to Transparent Redistricting, which offers guidance to the General Assembly and the Legislative Reapportionment Committee on how to achieve unparalleled transparency and community engagement in the district-drawing process.
The Roadmap can be read https://drawthelinespa.org/blog/roadmap-to-transparent-redistricting.
About Draw the Lines PA
Draw the Lines PA is an educational initiative that aims to “slay the gerrymander” in Pennsylvania. The project provides teaching resources, digital tools, and data to everyday Pennsylvanians so they can draw their own election maps. Since 2018, over 7,200 Pennsylvanians have used those tools to attempt to draw their own election maps, and many have entered those maps in Draw the Lines’ twice-yearly public competitions. Draw the Lines is a project from the nonpartisan nonprofit Committee of Seventy, Pennsylvania’s oldest good government group.