Fight Over Voting Rights May Cause Philadelphia, Its Suburbs to Each Lose a State House Seat

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Image via The Allentown Morning Call.

The fight over voting rights currently brewing nationwide could shape Pennsylvania politics for years to come and shift more political power to rural, GOP-friendlier districts, write Jonathan Lai and Michaelle Bond for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Philadelphia, an urban area with a diverse population and high concentration of immigrants, could lose one or even two House seats, while the surrounding suburbs could lose another.

The issue at hand is to determine who should get counted when drawing political maps: all the people living in a state or only eligible voters?

This would affect areas with a higher population of children or those with more noncitizen immigrants. They are still represented by lawmakers, but have no say selecting them.

The currently advocated position is that if someone cannot vote, they should not be included when drawing electoral maps. This has been embraced by a small but growing group of Republicans.

However, this could game the system to determine that only certain people are worthy of representation, said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, “and that’s a dangerous path to go down.”

Read more about the issue in The Philadelphia Inquirer here.

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