This article is shared with LebTown by content partner Spotlight PA.
By Kate Huangpu of Spotlight PA
LEHIGH VALLEY โ Over the past five years, Victor Martinez has noticed more and more Hispanic-run businesses crop up on the route he drives to work.
Martinez owns La Mega, a Spanish radio station located right outside of downtown Allentown. During his commute from his Macungie home, heโs seen new restaurants, hair salons, and bodegas. One restaurant located five minutes from his station, La Bicicleta, opened only two years ago and its Venezuelan arepas are now among his mainstays.
The business boom reflects the rapid growth of Pennsylvaniaโs Latino population, which surpassed 1 million people according to the latest census โ a 43% increase from a decade ago. The problem, Martinez said, is that growth in population has yet to translate into a rise in power and influence at all levels of government, in particular the state legislature.
โAs soon as the census came out, leaders in the Hispanic community, in Allentown and Reading, started calling each other and talking to each other on [how] we need to make sure we involve ourselves in every district conversation,โ Martinez said. โNow we have it on paper. Now we can go and express to governments that our community needs and deserves to have representation.โ
To that end, Martinez has become one of the most vocal Latino advocates during this yearโs redistricting process โ a legally required redrawing of the stateโs legislative districts based on the decennial census data. Far more than a bureaucratic exercise, redistricting can have enormous implications for which groups have the most voting influence in a given area, and which party โ Democrats or Republicans โ have the advantage come Election Day.
There are more than 3 million people of color living in Pennsylvania, and these communities have powered the stateโs population growth. Their gains more than offset the continued contraction of the white population, which fell by half a million during the past decade.
In total, a quarter of the stateโs residents now identify as non-white. Yet just 10% of the General Assemblyโs 253 members identify as people of color. In 2015, that number was 9%.
Thatโs why advocates like Martinez are increasingly getting involved. They see redistricting as an opportunity for political maps and voting power to more equitably represent the growth of certain communities.
Martinez said heโs hopeful new lines could create at least two more legislative districts that could elect a Latino representative.
โThereโs zero in the Senate,โ he said, โand there are only four Latinos in the House of Representatives.โ
Legal barriers
To Martinez and other people of color, equitable representation is proven by a legislative assembly that is reflective of the demographics of the state. But demographic majorities, even in areas with minority enclaves, can be difficult to represent on maps due to communities being scattered or geographic barriers such as rivers or highways.
The law can also create hurdles.
Neither the Pennsylvania Constitution nor the U.S. Constitution explicitly requires that legislative districts demographically represent their constituents. The state constitution lists only three requirements: compactness, contiguity, and minimizing municipality splits.
Federal regulations regarding redistricting are outlined by the 14th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Citing the Equal Protection Clause, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to use race as a predominant factor when drawing district lines.
Separately, the Voting Rights Act prohibits vote dilution of minority communities, meaning consolidating or dispersing a minority community with the effect of reducing its voting power. But proving dilution is a tall order under the law.
These protections can complicate efforts to create new districts and challenge current ones.
โUnfortunately, the only tool in the federal toolkit that we have is the Voting Rights Act to protect marginalized communities,โ Fulvia Vargas-De Leรณn, an attorney with legal advocacy group LatinoJustice, said. โPennsylvania, like many other states, does not have clear guidelines, aside from contiguity and compactness, in terms of how they draw districts.โ
To address that difficulty, some mapmakers โ such as the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, a panel of the top House and Senate leaders and an independent chair handling the General Assembly maps โ have turned to โcommunities of interestโ as an alternative.
These are geographical areas where residents have common political goals. But the commissionโs commitment to this principle is not legally binding, and because outlining such communities requires public input and feedback, advocates worry that there will not be enough participation throughout the process to produce fully representative maps.
For Will Gonzalez โ executive director of Ceiba, a coalition of Philadelphia Latino organizations โ bringing such communities of interest to the attention of legislators is essential. For example, he said, Northeast Phillyโs concentration of Latinos and Latino institutions, from nonprofits and churches to schools and businesses, must be kept together despite them not comprising a majority.
โIn those places that do not rise to that level of 50% plus one, [we] must make sure that they donโt get cut and divided,โ Gonzalez said. โWe want to be able to have communities of interest, who share in meeting the challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities that might present themselves to their communities through a unified representation in their legislature.
โThatโs why being part of the process in the beginning is really, really important.โ
โDivided in so many waysโ
Preserving communities of interest is a common criterion across the country, and is used by more than half the states. The Legislative Reapportionment Commission has been accepting testimony from citizens outlining communities of interest on its website and at hearings it has hosted.
Martinez has testified at three of those hearings, using Allentown โ where 52% of residents are Hispanic or Latino โ as his case in point.
Lehigh County currently contains seven state House districts, only one of which is a majority-minority district. That area, District 22, encompasses most of Allentown and is currently represented by Peter Schweyer, a Democrat who has held the seat since 2015. Martinez believes the three districts that divide Allentown unfairly split up the Latino population, and he hopes his involvement might improve them.
โWe get divided in so many ways that we have no shot of representing ourselves,โ Martinez said. โThere is an opportunity to have someone that can represent us, that looks like us, that understands us, our culture, our community. And for me, thatโs important because it means weโre in the room.โ
Schweyer pushed back against the idea that a district shape alone can ensure representation.
โCommunities of color as a redistricting principle is something that I strongly support,โ he said. โI believe in representation. But at the same time, thereโs no guarantee. We canโt just assume that just because we draw a [majority-minority] district โ African American, Latino, what have you โ that youโre going to guarantee somebody from that community is going to get elected.โ
In Schweyerโs district, Hispanics account for 56% of the population, while communities of color make up over 75% of the district overall.
But some advocates argue that minority residents would be better served by districts in which they donโt make up more than 50% of the population
If Schweyerโs district were broken into two, for example, that could create more opportunities for Hispanic voters to sway elections. This approach could also benefit communities that are not geographically concentrated enough to constitute a majority.
Vargas-De Leรณn suggested that this approach might be more equitable, but the legality of such an approach is subject to debate.
A critical mass
Martinezโs participation in the redistricting process comes amid greater awareness of how consequential the process can be for communities. But to truly affect mapmaking and define communities of interest, Pennsylvanians must participate en masse in the process, something advocates doubt will happen for a host of reasons, from apathy to outright roadblocks.
While the redistricting commission has solicited testimony from more than 50 citizen witnesses and opened an online portal to accept comments, the ability to give testimony is still limited by language barriers and time, among other constraints.
Because of those hurdles, Vargas De-Leรณn has doubts that such a critical mass will step up.
โHistorically, redistricting is one of the ways that we have affected the voting power of marginalized communities,โ Vargas De-Leรณn said. โItโs one of the silent tactics of sorts, I would say, because itโs not obvious when itโs done. But itโs part of the toolbox to keep these communities disenfranchised.โ
In Lehigh County, advocates for Latino residents say disengagement with the political process stymies representation. Diana Robinson of Make the Road Pennsylvania, an organization dedicated to organizing working-class Latino voters, said the system works against them.
Commission hearings that lacked translation, as well as Spanish instructions to voters in Berks County that had the wrong mail ballot return date, are typical examples of carelessness, Robinson said.
โIt goes beyond just ensuring thereโs Latinx representation, but also having representatives and the ability to elect representatives that also share our values,โ Robinson said.
Martinez remains hopeful his testimony will be reflected in the initial drafts of maps. Although the Pennsylvania Constitution sets a Jan. 12 deadline, lawmakers have expressed a desire to expedite the process and release initial maps within the next few weeks.
โIf it was easy, anybody could do it,โ Martinez said, referring to the commission. โThatโs what they signed up for. So, we have to make sure we hold them accountable.โ
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