LETTER: Outside money spent on PA judicial races

In the last decade, millions of dollars of outside money have been spent on our Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice elections. The retention elections are shaping up to be another spending spree for outside money.

Outside donors don’t care about Pennsylvanians or Pennsylvania — they are playing the long game and it’s all about control of Washington, D.C.

The Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC) draws our state legislative maps. The LRC is made up of two Harrisburg majority party leaders and two Harrisburg minority party leaders. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court chooses the tie-breaking LRC chair.

The LRC chair determines which party controls the state legislative map drawing process. If a partisan court chooses a partisan hack, the state legislative maps will be gerrymandered to favor the chair’s party, and those maps will lock in the majority party in Harrisburg for the next decade. Voters will have little say in the matter.   And then, the next time congressional redistricting happens, the majority party in Harrisburg that was decided by the gerrymandered state legislative maps will draw and gerrymander our congressional maps.

The outside money spent on Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections is all about Congress, and we are all just pawns in the game.  An Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) will get the PA Legislature out of the business of drawing congressional maps, and it will get the PA Supreme Court out of the business of choosing the tie-breaking chair for our state legislative maps. An IRC would make our PA Supreme Court elections much less interesting to outside money.

Pottstown area legislators who have sponsored Fair Districts PA-supported IRC legislation (HB 31 and SB 131) include Sen. Tracy Pennycuick and Rep. Mark Gillen. Thank you!

To learn more and to see if your legislator has sponsored, visit https://fairdistrictspa.com/take-action/contact-your-legislator.

Ruth Yeiser,Schwenksville