Eight voters and three community organizations took their argument to Commonwealth Court today in their effort to join a lawsuit challenging a subpoena issued by a state Senate committee to the Department of State seeking the personally identifying information of the approximately nine million registered voters in Pennsylvania.

It is clear from what we’ve seen in this report that these men do not respect the will of the voters. No elected official should remain in office, if they do not respect the voters who put them there.

Common Cause Pennsylvania, the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, Make the Road Pennsylvania, and the voters say that they have an interest in the case because voters’ constitutional right to privacy will be compromised if the Senate Republicans are allowed to enforce their subpoena for voters’ private personal data.

Today, the Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Commission voted to approve a resolution that effectively rolls back the much-needed prison gerrymandering reforms passed last month. The resolution seeks to count incarcerated people whose sentences are ten years or longer at the location they are currently housed in, rather than in their communities.  

"These subpoenas are a frightening violation of voters’ privacy and an egregious abuse of power. State regulations specifically exempt certain information from public release, because of privacy concerns --  but these subpoenas would require the Department of State to provide that information anyway." 

The vote to allocate incarcerated people to their home districts, rather than the districts where they are incarcerated, is an important step toward fully representative legislative districts in Pennsylvania.