There have been a few efforts to take partisan politics out of the process. Iowa, for example, has a non-partisan redistricting commission known as the Legislative Service Bureau, which was founded in 1980 as an effort to end decades of political warfare over districts. Although the Bureau got off to a rocky start and its first recommendations were overruled by the legislature in 1981, it has successfully proposed plans in 1991 and 2001 that were passed with little controversy.
Pennsylvania superficially resembles the Iowa model, at least in the state legislative districts, by putting the process in the hands of a bipartisan commission created during the constitutional revision of 1968. In practice, however, the districts are heavily gerrymandered. This year the close balance of power in Harrisburg means the stakes are extremely high in redistricting and the process is bound to be tense.
Philadelphia, meanwhile, is legendary for its nasty political infighting and absurdly gerrymandered city council districts. The fighting will certainly be bloody in trying to decide the final shape of the 10 council districts since it is clear that the city has lost at least 68,000 residents since 2000, even while certain neighborhoods have seen a rush of development and resettlement. These changes could force dramatic changes to the current districts, potentially separating powerful incumbents from their traditional power bases. The ten council members with geographically defined districts will have the most at stake, although the seven other council members who are elected at large city-wide will vote on the plan and will certainly be a part of whatever alliances take shape. The Latino population has continued to swell and there will probably be a major effort to preserve the concentration of Latino votes in a single district (currently the Seventh District) to ensure representation on City Council.
There have been a variety of proposals to improve redistricting at the state and city level, including a failed state bill in 2008 that would have more closely mirrored the Iowa system by putting redistricting in the hands of the non-partisan Legislative Reference Bureau, which normally helps legislators of both parties draft their bills. In the city, Mayor Michael Nutter called for an "independent citizen's commission" to come up with a new redistricting system as part of his 2007 campaign platform, but so far no action has been taken .
Compiled by Committee of 70
Committee of Seventy + 
