Pennsylvania Democrats have long complained that women are under-represented in state politics. But last month they turned away two women who won election to the Democratic State Committee, giving the positions to men who garnered fewer votes. Believe it or not, Democrats are justifying this decision in the name of gender equity.

The committee members set the party platform, endorse candidates and develop election strategies throughout the Keystone State. They also raise money and decide how much financial support individual candidates will receive from the party. Presumably to boost the number of women in party leadership, Pennsylvania Democrats have a longstanding rule that “there shall be an equal number of females and males elected” to the state committee.

This year the policy backfired. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, Pennsylvania has seen a surge of female candidates for state office. So the Democratic State Committee’s gender-equity rule functioned as an affirmative-action program, working to the benefit of weaker male candidates. In Philadelphia County’s First Senatorial District, male candidates Darrell Clarke and Noam Kugelmass will both occupy state committee seats, though they lost on May 15 by more than a thousand votes to female candidates Judi Golding Baker and Mariel Martin.

Ms. Martin is understandably irked about losing a political post she won fair and square. But instead of insisting that Pennsylvania Democrats honor the will of the electorate, she’s now criticizing the gender-equity rule as discriminatory against transgender, non-binary and gender-fluid candidates. The Democratic Party is sticking with its gender-equity rule, and progressives are raising the same objection as Ms. Martin, so the party may soon try to make up for one injustice caused by quotas by creating more quotas.

Many modern Democrats have fallen so far down the looking glass of identity politics that they even want to overturn the election principle of majority rule.