Posted: | December 5, 2014 12:26 PM |
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From: | Senator Dominic Pileggi and Sen. Jay Costa |
To: | All Senate members |
Subject: | ​Creating an Online Boundary Database & Online Election Results Database |
We plan to introduce legislation which will: 1. Create an online statewide boundary database for counties, municipalities, wards and precincts, developed by the Department of State in consultation with the Legislative Data Processing Center and made available on the Legislative Data Processing Center’s public website. 2. Create a searchable online database including election results and aggregated voter registration information, developed by the Department of State in consultation with the Legislative Data Processing Center and made available on the Legislative Data Processing Center’s public website. 3. Establish in statute that population data approved by the Legislative Reapportionment Commission will be used in any congressional redistricting legislation considered by the General Assembly. (This was done via Senate Resolution 148, adopted unanimously by both chambers, in the 2011-12 session.) 4. Establish the dates during which election district boundary changes are limited so as to help facilitate the redistricting process. This has been done during the past several redistricting processes with no controversy. The dates in the legislation will be July 1, 2019, through November 30, 2022, or through resolution of all judicial appeals, whichever occurs later. During the most recent round of redistricting, issues related to the boundaries of political subdivisions in Pennsylvania needlessly complicated the Commission’s work and created unnecessary costs of approximately $500,000. This creation of an online statewide boundary database will have many benefits, including providing all interested parties with a continually updated boundary map and greatly simplifying the census "boundary reconciliation" project that is done every 10 years. This legislation will be similar to Senate Bill 404 (printer’s number 582) from the 2013-14 legislative session. |
Introduced as SB384