BEHOLD: What Pennsylvania Republicans want to blow up democracy to protect

Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers are going crazy … crazy like foxes. On the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of a request to stay a ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that ordered the state’s GOP-controlled legislature to redraw the state’s congressional districts, Republican lawmakers have begun calling for extreme, democracy-shredding measures in response. State Rep. Cris Dush, the leader of this effort, has submitted an official memorandum requesting his colleagues join him in starting the impeachment process against the five justices on the state high court who found the GOP’s congressional map to be an illegal partisan gerrymander in violation of the state constitution.

“The five Justices who signed this order that blatantly and clearly contradicts the plain language of the Pennsylvania Constitution, [sic] engaged in misbehavior in office,” Dush proclaims in his memo.

Fun fact! The five justices Dush wants to impeach are the five Democrats on the bench.

Republican House leadership isn’t ruling out Dush’s impeachment proposal. And if the GOP speaker wants to stay in charge of the chamber, he has very powerful motivation to move forward with impeachment.

Supreme Court elections in Pennsylvania are partisan, and in 2015, three open seats were filled that shifted the balance of the court from a three-to-two Republican majority (with three vacancies) to a five-to-two Democratic one. Subsequent elections for these justices will be “retention” (yes-no) elections, which incumbents very rarely lose, so open seats present the only real opportunity for either party to gain seats. These occur very rarely, usually only when a justice reaches the mandatory retirement age of 75. The next time a Democrat will hit that milestone isn’t until 2022, and the next time after that—remember, the GOP now has a two-seat defict—won’t be until 2027.

Consequently, Republican have almost no chance of flipping the court before 2021.

Wait, 2021? Who cares about 2021?

Pennsylvania’s Republican legislators care about 2021—quite a lot. You see, that’s when a commission of two Republicans, two Democrats, and a fifth member agreed upon by the other four create new state House and Senate maps.

If (when, let’s be real) the two Republicans and two Democrats fail to agree upon that fifth tie-breaking member, the state Supreme Court steps in to select the member, which it did in 2011, when Republicans had a court majority. In 2021, conversely, a Democratic-majority Supreme Court is likely to select a tiebreaker who will reject any map that unfairly benefits Republicans.

Sign the petition: Stop Pennsylvania Republicans’ war on democracy.