Census could stall the redrawing of legislative districts

By TAYLOR BROWN
JEFF STITT
& CHRISTINE HAINES

It’s possible that the next set of district lines for Congress and the state Pennsylvania Legislature won’t be hammered out until May 2022 due to a delay in U.S. Census results.

State lawmakers, who will need to know their districts to circulate petitions to land a spot on the ballot for the May 17, 2022 primary, were told Wednesday it could take up until May of that year for new parameters to be set.

The delay in reported data from the 2020 count could also mean the primary may also need to be rescheduled.

Brent McClintock, head of the Legislative Data Processing Center, said if the U.S. Census Bureau is able to provide the requisite data to states by Sept. 30 — its current projection — the agency could get the numbers into shape for the mapmakers to finish their jobs sometime around May 2022.

Wendy Underhill, the elections and redistricting program executive director at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said the delay has largely been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – and some states may begin to draw their maps using other data before “fine tuning” them later when census data is available.

Others may draw maps without census data, expecting a lawsuit, then revise them with the official numbers that would presumably make litigation moot, she said.

In Pennsylvania, which is likely to lose one of its 18 congressional seats to a faster-growing state, finalizing the map is even more crucial.

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