Thursday, January 26 | First day to circulate nomination petitions |
Thursday, February 16 | Last day to file nomination petitions |
Thursday, February 23 | Last day to file objections to set aside nomination petitions |
Monday, February 27 | Last day that court may fix for hearings on objections to nomination petitions |
Friday, March 2 | Last day for court to finally determine objections to nomination petitions |
Friday, March 2 | Last day for withdrawal by candidates who filed nomination petitions |
The Commonwealth shall be divided into fifty senatorial and two hundred three representative districts, which shall be composed of compact and contiguous territory as nearly equal in population as practicable. Each senatorial district shall elect one Senator, and each representative district one Representative. Unless absolutely necessary no county, city, incorporated town, borough, township or ward shall be *375 divided in forming either a senatorial or representative district.
This suit challenges the recent Pennsylvania Reapportionment Acts and the election of state senators and representatives thereunder. More importantly, it challenges—in light of recent decisions interpreting the Constitution of the United States—the validity of certain provisions of the Constitution of Pennsylvania which establish the legislative branch of government. It presents one of the most important *417 constitutional questions ever raised in the history of this Commonwealth. It involves the basic rights of the citizens of Pennsylvania in the election of their state lawmakers. Historically and logically, this Court is the most appropriate forum to determine the issues presented and to fashion suitable remedies. Proper and continuing respect for federal-state judicial relationships necessitates consideration by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania of the relevant state statutes and state constitutional provisions, subject, of course, to review by the Supreme Court of the United States.
It is our view that Section 16, when construed as a whole, demands that Senate apportionment legislation respect county lines and lines of other political subdivisions (such as wards, boroughs, and townships), insofar as possible, without doing violence to the population principle enunciated by *418 the first sentence of Section 16 and also by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.... The requirement [in Section 17, respecting the House] that apportionment should be among the several counties further signifies an intention to respect county lines and to utilize counties as units of representation to the maximum extent consistent with the equal-population principle. Indeed, Section 17, when considered as a whole, demands that the boundaries of all political subdivisions be respected when not in conflict with the overriding population principle.
The advantages of assignment [of] the responsibility for reapportioning the Legislature to such a commission are quite obvious, and several other states have recently adopted or considered proposals for similar commissions. The equal representation on the Commission provided to the majority and minority members of each house precludes the reapportionment process from being unfairly dominated by the party in power at the moment of apportionment. In addition, the provision for a chairman who can act as a ‘tiebreaker’ eliminates the possibility of a legislative deadlock on reapportionment such as the one that occurred in the Legislature of this Commonwealth in 1965 and compelled *420 this Court to undertake the task of reapportionment. At the same time the Legislature's expertise in reapportionment matters is essentially retained.
[N]one of the appellants in this matter offered any concrete or objective data indicating that the districts established by the Commission's plan lack compactness. The Pennsylvania Constitution requires that those who challenge the Commission's plan have the burden of establishing that it is “contrary to law.” In light of appellants' failure to produce any objective data indicating that the districts established by the Commission's plan lack compactness, we cannot conclude, merely on the basis of appellants' unsupported assertions, that the Commission's plan fails for lack of compactness.
The gradual preeminence of the one-person-one-vote principle in the 1971 and 1981 reapportionments would be turned on its head in the reapportionment of 1991. By this time, computers **750 and high technology would make equality in population a simple exercise, while new frontiers, particularly the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 [42 U.S.C. §§ 1971–1974E) ] (as it had been amended in 1982), would loom up with historic prominence and threaten to topple reapportionment plans in Pennsylvania and across the nation.”
I remain circumspect concerning the manner in which state constitutional requirements of compactness and integrity of political subdivisions have been applied **752 by the Court in the prior decisions that are followed here, and I am receptive to the concern that the Court should not occupy an unduly passive role in the vindication of these essential precepts. I write, therefore, to express my own position that facets of the Commission's present plan for reapportioning the Pennsylvania Legislature test the outer limits of justifiable deference, at least in the absence of some specific explanation for why the constitutional prerequisites of compactness and *431 respect for political subdivisions cannot be accommodated simultaneous with the maintenance of substantial equality of population and enforcement of voting interests of protected groups in the manner prescribed by federal law.
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