What is that 12th District?

At least Westmoreland County elected officials will have a clearer path to Congress with the Dem maps

The map is released: image://pbs.twimg.com/media/DWbFP1AX4AQKUig.jpg

10 Trump and 8 Clinton districts. But many are swingish enough to give Democrats 11-12 in a good year.

Complete renumbering of districts.

Yes, but the new ones are much more logical.

The 5 Dem hacks on the Supremes did their duty to pick a Dem gerrymander! That’s the headline.

Agree, RP. Completely logical.

The current map minimizes competitiveness and reduces the chances of more than 6-7 Dems in a really good year. Any alternative to it is going to be called a Democratic gerrymander by state GOP leadership (who have already apparently given their foot soldiers their talking points). I'm interested to see how the Federal appeals turn out.

Only the GOP would call getting 2 more Trump districts in an very evenly divided state a Democratic gerrymander.

On to the federal courts to overturn this illegal Dem gerrymander!

What legal grounds will opponents cite (after the Supreme Court did not intervene before)? Elections Clause?

They say that the US Constitution gives redistricting control strictly to the legislatures in the states and the court is violating this. Of course, many states have a long-established procedure to give it to courts if the legislature/gov deadlocks and some current maps were done this way. And several states do it by panel. And many maps in the past have been invalidated by courts and redrawn. So - dubious.

The 5 Dem hacks on the Supremes did their duty to pick a Dem gerrymander! That’s the headline. Correction: one Democratic Justice (Baer) joined the 2 Republicans in the dissent. So just 4 hacks on the court and one Dem with some sense.

that 14th district is probably the most logical looking SW PA Congressional district since the 1980s PA22 ( https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=34460 ). Although the PA20 in the 90s was logical aside from a tentacle ( https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=28420 ) Although the map does put the 1st district outside of Philadelphia for the first time ever.

I can’t tell if I’m in the 3rd or 5th.

The NY Times has an interactive map where you could hopefully figure out which one you're in: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/19/upshot/pennsylvania-new-house-districts-gerrymandering.html

I downloaded the shapefile and named the KML file "persilyvania".. the boundary between the 3rd and 5th in Philadelphia, going east to west from the Delaware River is... Mifflin Street, west to S. 11th, north to Tasker St, west to Broad Street, south to Passyunk Ave, and west all the way to the Schuylkill River. Then there's some more details west of that river. It kinda looks like the 26th, 39th, and 40th wards were the primary wards put into the 5th. Maybe parts of the 51st too? A few more details than the boundary between the 2nd and 3rd, which involves a 7 mile stretch of Broad Street as one of the boundaries.

Damn. I’m two blocks north of Mifflin. I’d have preferred the 5th district.

The US Supremes should now redraw the MD, CT and MASS maps to get more Republican out of those states to make them “fair” like the PA Supremes just forced an illegal map on us.

I’d be willing to have independent panels for every state and take my chances.

It's not an illegal map. The legislature was given the opportunity to pass a compact map and they refused to do that so the court drew the map. A compact map was going to benefit Democrats in South East Pennsylvania simply for geographic reasons.

I’d be willing to have independent panels for every state and take my chances. Iowa system yes. None of this bogus bullsh*t pretend independent commission that we have out of Cali and Arizona where the Dems gamed the system by putting liberal pretend independents on the commission.

can we get single transferable vote and democracy sausages like in Australia? Although the part of election results needing weeks to complete counting wouldn't be anything new in Washington and California.