17 members of Congress would be elected by a statewide vote rather than by district without redistricting agreement

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – What happens if the governor and lawmakers can’t agree on how to change the state’s Congressional maps?

Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, the chairman of the House State Government Committee, warned on Thursday that federal law provides a way out – through an election in which the state’s 17 members of Congress would be elected by a statewide vote rather than by district.

The state Supreme Court could draw the redistricting maps themselves – and they did so in 2018 after ruling that the state’s Congressional maps were illegally gerrymandered. But Grove said that there is a key difference between the two situations. The Supreme Court’s actions in 2018 were in response to a lawsuit.

This situation comes as part of the normal redistricting process and if a stalemate lands in the laps of the Supreme Court justices’, they’d have a solution other than redrawing the maps themselves available to them. “The courts don’t need to draw the maps. There is a remedy in place,” he said. Grove made the comments in a press conference he called to express his frustration that Gov. Tom Wolf has refused to actively participate in the redistricting process.

Wolf has said he won’t negotiate on how to redraw the maps and intends to participate by critiquing the efforts of the General Assembly and ultimately either signing those efforts into law or vetoing them. His initial critique was not exactly positive. Regardless, a spokeswoman for Wolf on Thursday told The Patriot-News that Grove is being “alarmist.”

Under The Dome – capitolwire.com