Pennsylvania Republican legislators are annoyed with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. It has a majority of Democrats, and it ruled that no fraud had taken place in the November vote in Pennsylvania. The Republicans now want to change the way the Court is elected.
In Pennsylvania at-large elections, either party has a chance to win. Four years ago it was Trump, this year it was Biden. We also have one Republican U.S. Senator (Toomey) and one Democratic Senator (Casey). And after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court drew fair districts for the U.S. Congress, we have 8 Democratic and 8 Republican congress members. So why is the state legislature so overwhelmingly Republican? Gerrymandering.
Now Republican legislators are pushing a constitutional amendment to elect the Court by districts. Then they can gerrymander the districts, pack Democrats into a few districts, and skew the elections Republican. There is a reason the Founding Fathers put separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution. They were familiar not only with royal tyranny, but legislative tyranny. (And at that time the Pennsylvania legislature was setting a bad example.)
The Republicans in the legislature also know that Republicans tend to vote more than Democrats in off-year local elections. It is a cynical ploy by cynical legislators like our own Doyle Heffley and Jerry Knowles, and it will probably work.
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