By Briana Wipf
“You have to be a pretty serious data person to take dives into this data,” Mark McKillop quipped toward the end of a Year of Data and Society presentation given Friday, Jan. 28, on the legislative reapportionment process in Pennsylvania.
That McKillop’s comment came during a talk sponsored by Pitt’s Year of Data and Society, his words may be more of an invitation than warning to attendees.
McKillop’s hourlong Zoom presentation tackled the complexities of using population data and voter files in redrawing Pennsylvania congressional and state legislative maps. Reapportionment is done following the results of each decennial census. The U.S. Constitution requires that the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned to the states according to population, and states with more than one representative then have the task of drawing those district lines.
Mark McKillop discusses the complexities involved in the redistricting process for state and federal elections at a Jan. 28, presentation sponsored by Pitt’s Year of Data and Society.
Pennsylvania lost one House seat as a result of reapportionment following the 2020 census, necessitating the additional process of redistricting, or redrawing district lines to account for one fewer U.S. representative.
In addition to redistricting to account for the lost House seat, redistricting must also take place for state legislative districts in both the Senate and House.
The whole process, according to McKillop, is complex and difficult, both because of partisan bickering but also because there are several legitimate methods to determine how to draw those districting lines.
“There’s never a definitive answer in how you approach this,” McKillop noted. “A lot of this stuff is not cut and dry.”
McKillop’s presentation focused on the process of redrawing state legislative lines – the districts for the PA General Assembly. This process involves the Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Commission, which is composed of five people – the Democratic and Republication caucus leaders and a chairperson selected by those members (or by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, if the four members cannot reach a decision). Former Pitt chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg is the current chair of the LRC.
The LRC doesn’t come up with the proposed redistricted legislative maps, however. That’s up to the data wonks, a role McKillop was in over multiple reapportionment and redistricting cycles in Pennsylvania, most recently the 2011 Pennsylvania Congressional reapportionment and the 2011-2012 State Senate Reapportionment.
According to McKillop, the numbers people take into consideration include U.S. Census data along with past election results and voter files.
Political parties want the redistricted maps to favor them, but the districts also have to be similar in population, and must also be compact and contiguous, and should preserve political subdivisions as much as is possible. A compact district is one that takes up as little physical geography as possible, and contiguous means the entire district is connected in some way. Due to population density, the advisement to preserve political subdivisions, or not breaking up counties, towns, or cities, is sometimes impossible, particularly in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
McKillop explained that having data about voters complements the Census data because it can provide “a decent view of trends and possibilities” for the competitiveness of future elections taking place in proposed districts.
At the time of this writing, the redistricting for State Senate and House seats remains underway, as is the selection of a map for PA Congressional (federal) districts. For the latter, the PA Supreme Court is now involved in selecting the map, due to an impasse between the the legislative and executive branches.
McKillop recommended taking a deep dive into the LRC website for more information on the reapportionment and redistricting process. Other resources include the U.S. Census Bureau’s Congressional Apportionment page; redistricting.org, a project from the Center for Urban Research and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York; and a national redistricting tracker from FiveThirtyEight.
The Committee of Seventy’s redistricting page is here. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has kept tabs and graded the proposed maps. Fair Districts PA takes a more critical look at the state’s redistricting process.