Bucks County state House Districts
Download File (block-assignments (3).csv)
I want to ask you to not only follow the PA Constitutional requirements to have compact districts of equal population and avoid dividing local jurisdictions, but also to not gerrymander these districts to favor a particular party or candidate. Gerrymandering results in government gridlock, low trust in government, and low voter turnout. It is the antithesis of what our democracy was designed to be and to do. Polls consistently show that citizens are well aware of how corrupt the redistricting process has been, and they want it to stop. Over the past 5 years, Bucks County legislators, both R & D, have pointed to maps and described to me how their districts are gerrymandered. The result is that while 52% of votes cast in Bucks County between 2012 and 2018 were for Democrats, Republicans consistently won 7 out of 10 house seats in the county. So, here are my recommendations for redistricting Bucks Co which has a population of 647K, equivalent to 10 state house districts. - Keep all 10 districts in Bucks County. The population of the county doesn’t require any districts be combined with another county. - It is possible to only divide 4 of the 54 municipalities in the county with none divided more than once. The four that are divided in this example are Lower Makefield, Lower Southampton, Northampton and New Britain. - Keep house districts as compact and avoid crossing the county’s 3 regions- lower, middle, and upper Bucks, when possible. - Keep the 4 interconnected boroughs of Penndel, Hulmeville, Langhorne and Langhorne Manor, which are surrounded by Middletown Township, in the same district as Middletown. They share important resources (e.g.emergency and school) and borders. - Keep four central Bucks municipalities of Chalfont, Doylestown, Buckingham and Solebury which are connected by state route 202, including a new bypass, in one district. -- Keep the underfunded Morrisville School District in one district, versus dividing it the way it is today. Split underfunded Neshaminy SD, which is too big to be in a single district, no more than once. All of these goals are met in the map submitted. It can also be viewed via the link below. It has an 8% total deviation from the target population of 64K for each district. https://davesredistricting.org/join/ae53f044-4412-4ce8-bad0-add384265669