Governor Tom Wolf reaffirmed his commitment to election fairness and campaign finance reform in a public address Monday afternoon.
“It’s critically important that our election system be fair and that it be easily accessible because every citizen regardless of zip code or economic circumstance has to be guaranteed the right to decide representation for themselves.”
With state government hearings scheduled for Tuesday on several measures that could significantly reduce or even end the practice of gerrymandering, or redrawing voting district lines to strengthen the party in power, Wolf called for several steps to be taken.
Those steps include establishing an independent commission of public appointees tasked with developing new electoral maps after each census as well as modernizing the voting system. According to Wolf these plans are common sense ideas that should be goals of all political parties.
“These changes really are not partisan. These changes will not skew elections toward one side or the other. These common sense changes will simply create fairer elections that are open to all of our citizens, so that our politicians can compete in an open system on the merit of their ideas and thoughts rather than flaws in the voting system.”
Wolf also called the recent attempt by several Republican lawmakers to impeach several justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court “a waste of precious time and money”.
