The New York Times
Pennsylvania GOP for more power over the judiciary raises alarm
When the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously rejected an attempt by the Republican to overturn the state’s election results in November, Judge David N. Wecht issued his own scathing reprimand, calling the GOP attempt “futile.” condemned ‘a dangerous game’. “It is not our role to give legitimacy to such transparent and untimely attempts to undermine the will of Pennsylvania voters,” wrote Wecht, a Democrat who was elected to the bench in 2016 for a ten-year term. is. ‘Courts should not decide elections when the will of the voters is clear. The Republicans of Pennsylvania now have a plan to make it less likely that judges like Wecht will get in the way. Subscribe to The Morning Newsletter from New York Times GOP lawmakers, whose dozens of supporters support the overthrow of the state’s election results to help former President Donald Trump move to change the way judges are elected in Pennsylvania, in an opportunity that could lead the scale of the judiciary to benefit their party, or at least elect judges who are more likely to tackle Republican election challenges. The proposal would replace the current system of direct elections for judges with judicial districts set up by the Republican-controlled legislature. These districts can empower rural, mainly conservative areas and especially recreate the state Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Democratic lean. Democrats are now mobilizing to fight the effort, calling it a thinly veiled attempt to create a new level of gerrymandering – an escalation of decades-old use to pull congressional and state legislative districts to ensure political power in one party’s hands remain. Democrats are holding grassroots opposition, holding regular city hall events across Zoom, and planning social media campaigns and call-in days for lawmakers, as well as a huge education campaign for voters. One group, Why Courts Matter Pennsylvania, cut a two-minute information system. Republicans in Pennsylvania have traditionally used gerrymandering to retain their majority in the Legislature, despite Democratic victories in nationwide elections. Republicans have controlled the State House and the state Senate since 1993. Current legislative schedules make it unlikely that Republicans will be able to draft their majority in the House and Senate to approve the bill by Wednesday and propose it. to present to the voters. mood in May. The approval of the bill after that date would set up a new and long-running political war for November in this fiercely controversial state. Republicans have a history on their side: Pennsylvania voters tend to approve ballots. “You have to be very suspicious when you see a legislature that has been thwarted by a high court in its unconstitutional attempts to overhaul the democratic process and then try to set up the composition of the high court,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy program, said. at the Brennan Center for Justice. She added: “It is far too much control for one branch to have another branch, especially where one of its charges is to govern in the excessive legislation.” If the Republican bill becomes law, Pennsylvania would become the fifth state in the country just after Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Illinois to map its legal system according to the Brennan Center. And other states may soon join Pennsylvania in trying to recreate the courts through redistribution. Republicans in the Texas Legislature, which is also controlled by the IDP, recently introduced a bill that would move districts to the state appeals court by moving some counties to different districts, causing a stir among state Democrats who view the new districts as the weakening of the mood. the power of black and Latino communities in judicial elections and possibly the Republican tilt of the Texas courts. Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, called the bill a “pure coup d’état intended to influence blacks and Latinos to influence courts as their numbers grow in the state.” These judicial redistribution battles are taking shape as Republican-controlled lawmakers across the country examine new restrictions on voting in the 2020 election. In Georgia, Republicans in the state legislature are looking for a bunch of new laws that will make voting more difficult, including the ban on subjects and the restricted restrictions on import voting. Similar bills in Arizona will restrict consent to enrollment, including preventing the state from sending out ballot applications by mail. And in Texas, Republican lawmakers want to limit early voting periods. The nationwide effort by Republicans follows a successful four-year effort by Washington party lawmakers to reform the federal judiciary with conservative judges. Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, until recently the majority leader, and Trump, the Senate has confirmed 231 federal judges, as well as three new Supreme Court justices, over the former president’s four-year term, according to data provided by Russell Wheeler, ‘ a research fellow at the Brookings Institution. In a state like Pennsylvania, which has two densely populated Democratic cities and large rural areas, it can give extraordinary representation to sparsely populated places that lean more conservatively, especially if the legislature focuses on an enrichment tactic similar to that used in Pennsylvania in 2011. is. “Republicans were good in the districts of Pennsylvania, or good in the sense that they were successful,” Senate Sharif Street, a Democrat, said. “I think they want to stay successful, and they are confident that they can handle judicial districts.” Republicans in the state legislature argue that their proposed move would give different regions of Pennsylvania more representation. Russ Diamond, the Republican state representative who sponsors the bill, said in an email that regional representation is needed for the judiciary because the same consensus in the country that money for legislation should take place when the laws are heard on appeal. in practical situations in real life, and when there is a precedent for the future of the Commonwealth. “The general purpose is to include the full range of Pennsylvania’s appellate courts,” Diamond added. ‘There is no way to depoliticize the courts completely except to elect judges via a random choice or a lottery system. Every individual holds some political opinion. However, geographical diversity is seldom equal to racial diversity in the courts. The Brennan Center data has never had more than one color judge on the four states that use judicial districts in the Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky Supreme Court elections. While eight states use some form of judicial district to elect judges, Pennsylvania’s proposal remains an outlier on some key elements. First, a biased legislature could re-sign the district every 10 years, while those elsewhere stay longer or are based on legislation. In addition, the judicial districts in Pennsylvania would not be bound to or based on any existing legislative or congressional districts created from scratch by the Republican-controlled legislature. The move has attracted the attention of national Democratic groups that are at the forefront of battles over redistribution across the country. “A decade ago, the Republicans of Pennsylvania turned themselves into majorities in the legislature and the congressional delegation,” said Eric H. Holder Jr., the former U.S. Attorney General and current chairman of the National Democratic Redistribution Committee. “Now that the power has been violently weakened by the courts, they want to create judicial districts and then manipulate them in a blatant attempt to undermine the independence of the judiciary and tackle the courts with their conservative allies.” Since the bill has already passed the House once in 2020, it only needs to pass it again in both chambers of State Legislation to get it voted. Further suffocation of the Democrats: the bill does not require the signature of Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat. As it is an amendment to the Constitution, it will go to the polls as a referendum question to be voted on in the next election (if the bill is passed before Wednesday, it will be passed to voters during the May general election) . Historically, Pennsylvania voters have voted more in favor of ballots than against them, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. Good government groups have partnered with Democrats to launch a major campaign for voter education, and expect the judicial question to be put to the vote soon. Progressive groups, including the Judicial Independent Project of PA, a new coalition that includes the Common Cause voting rights group, have held digital city halls over the judicial redistribution proposal, with the attendance of 100 people regularly. On a Thursday night late last month, more than 160 people reported to Zoom to hear from coalition leaders about the bill and to make plans to further mobilize against it. Rebecca Litt, a senior organizer of a local indivisible group, proposed a day of legislation. Ricardo Almodovar, an organizing director of We the People PA, another progressive group, noted that the graphic and other social media campaigns were already underway to help educate voters. “We are also trying to humanize the courts,” Almodovar explained during a small session with residents of southeastern Pennsylvania, telling how specific court rulings “affect our lives.” During the full hour-long meeting, organizers repeatedly tried to make the interests very clear. “We are in the last legislative session of this,” said Alexa Grant, a program attorney with Common Cause. “So we are the last line of defense.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company