This post was updated at 10:05 p.m. Friday with reaction from political scientist G. Terry Madonna and Lehigh County Commissioner Amanda Holt.

Pennsylvania's Republican legislative leaders have submitted a proposed corrective map of the state's 18 Congressional districts to Gov. Tom Wolf that they believe "fully complies" with court mandates for a redraw.

It is, on first blush, a major rewrite that corrects the most egregious and obvious "voter-harvesting" that marked the now-voided 2011 map that, by a number of statistical measures, is scored as among the most partisan in America.

See where your town falls in these Congressional districts

In a significant step toward greater compactness, it keeps 52 of the state's 67 counties whole within a single district, up from 39 in the 2011 plan, and re-attaches several of the state's smaller cities to their home counties.

Spokesmen for the leaders also said while they purposely avoided pitting any two of the 12 sitting Congressmen who plan to seek re-election this year against each other, the map was otherwise developed without direct consideration for voter performance in recent elections.

The new congressional district map as submitted to Gov. Tom Wolf Friday night by House and Senate Republican leaders.

The current map of Pennsylvania Congressional districts.

"It's decent map. It's good. And most importantly, it hits all the constitutional markers," said Drew Crompton, chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County.

"So unless the Supreme Court changes the rules again, that map is per se constitutional in accordance with the decision that we got two days ago."

The map proposal and all accompanying data was delivered to the governor's office Friday night, about 7 p.m.

The state Supreme Court last month ordered a revised map for the upcoming 2018 elections after finding the current map - drawn in 2011 - had a pro-Republican slant that violates the Pennsylvania Constitution's guarantee of "free and equal" elections.

It has given the legislature and the governor until Feb. 15 to "enact" a new plan. If they can't do that, a four-judge majority on the court has ruled, the court will impose its own corrective plan.

That, of course, could trigger a new round of legal challenges.

But first things first.

Wolf now has several options:

He could accept the new proposal and signal to the court that he supports it as a preferred plan.

He could try to seek further changes in negotiations with the legislative leaders.

He could submit a completely different map to the court.

The governor's office said Wolf will review the plan through the weekend, and have more to say next week.

Some of the major changes in the Republican leaders' proposal include:

It consolidates much of the sprawling 7th District in suburban Philadelphia - tagged as "Goofy kicking Donald Duck" by critics - into a much more compact seat anchored in Delaware, Montgomery and Chester Counties.

The neighboring 6th District, in turn, is unwound from the 7th, and is consolidated in parts of Chester, Berks and Montgomery.

In the southwestern part of the state, the 12th District, tagged as a "hammerhead shark" swimming from the Ohio line 120 miles east to Johnstown, has lost the parts of Cambria and Somerset counties that made the "hammer."

The Lehigh Valley - Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton and their immediate suburbs - is made whole as the anchor of the redrawn 15th District.

Several of those districts, all held by Republicans at present, are likely to become more even competitive politically as a result.

In all, Crompton said, the GOP proposal keeps 68.8 percent of all Pennsylvania voters in their current district.

The GOP map was developed in closed-door work by the leaders and their consultants largely because of time constraints created, the staffers said, by the delay between the initial court order and issuance of the majority opinion on Wednesday.

"We did what we could do in light of us being hamstrung (by that time lag)" Crompton said, "and we are where we are."

It was not clear Friday if the leaders will bring rank-and-file lawmakers back into session next week to try ratify the new lines in bill form - as is the typical practice - before court's the Feb. 15 deadline.

Crompton and Neal Lesher, policy director for House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny County, said that was their bosses' preference, but both suggested it would depend in part on what feedback they receive from Wolf.

Even before the maps became public Friday, however, Democratic leaders were fuming that they had been kept sidelined in the process that - to date - has basically involved only the two senior-most Republican leaders.

For that reason alone, Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa and House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, both from Allegheny County, asked Wolf to reject the GOP's plan "outright."

They will, indirectly at least, have a chance to have input in the coming week through Democrat Wolf's office.

Franklin & Marshall College political science professor G. Terry Madonna said Friday night his first-blush review of the GOP map is that it's an improvement over the now-voided lines.

"It's a good first offer," Madonna said, "but now they have to give Wolf, who would have the final say on the map lines in bill form, a chance to weigh in."

If a final bipartisan agreement emerges by Thursday, Madonna added, "I think it would be hard for the Supreme Court to reject."

Amanda Holt, a grassroots activist-turned-Lehigh County commissioner who led challenges against state redistricting maps that emerged after the 2010 Census, also said the GOP plan appears to be an improvement although she plans to scrutinize the underlying data when it becomes available.

Holt said she appreciated that the proposed map squares up district lines in the northeast and southwest corners of the state, and the reunification of the Lehigh Valley.

"My first impression is it does reduce the number of county and municipality splits," she said. "Is it an improvement over the last map? Yes. Does it include splits that are unnecessary? Yes, it does."

The gerrymandering case arose from a lawsuit filed last summer by 18 registered Democrat voters and the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, who alleged that partisan cutting of the Congressional lines after the 2010 census amounted to "viewpoint discrimination" against Democratic voters.

In a December trial, they presented evidence that a series of 500 maps built on traditional redistricting principles and past vote counts never replicated the current 13 Republican. five Democrat split in Pennsylvania's Congressional delegation.

Defenders of the 2011 map - drafted by a Republican-controlled General Assembly and then-Gov. Tom Corbett - have said it checks all Constitutional requirements, and argued the Democrat plaintiffs are simply seeking guarantees of proportional representation that do not exist.

After a ferocious effort to get relief from the court's decision - which Scarnati and Turzai still say they are only complying with under protest - the GOP leaders made Friday what they called a good faith effort to comply.

Going further, senior staffers to the GOP leaders also suggested if their proposed maps do in fact become the lines for the 2018 campaign cycle - as opposed to court-imposed lines - they will likely end their court fights.

Any new maps are certain to bring some chaos to the state's congressional battlefield on the eve of the formal campaign season, as a number of candidates will find themselves in different districts than the ones they started running in.

But attorneys for plaintiffs in the case have said that pre-election shock wave is preferable to running another set of elections by lines that, they believe, have consistently discriminated against whole blocs of voters.

Staff writer Wallace McKelvey contributed to this report.