By the time you read this, the clock will have run out on Pennsylvania Republicans’ 2011 congressional voting map.

They will either have managed to cobble together a new congressional voting map at the last minute, after weeks of temper tantrums, delays and political and legal posturing.

Or they will have not — effectively signaling that they are willing to abdicate their constitutional responsibilities to a coequal branch of state government in favor of political and legal gamesmanship.

As of this writing, we can’t say which it will be. But neither outcome would surprise us.

Pennsylvania’s General Assembly is nothing if not predictable. And over the last several years members’ penchant for procrastination, slipshod work and buffoonery has been put on display again and again.

This is a legislature that delights in political theater, not governing. Which is only a problem when they’re forced to actually do something important — like produce a state budget or, in this case, a map of voting districts for Pennsylvania.

On Jan. 22 the state Supreme Court, in a 5-2 ruling along party lines, threw out the state’s congressional voting map. The map, which was drawn in 2011, amounts to an unconstitutional gerrymander that “clearly, plainly and palpably,” violates the Pennsylvania Constitution, the majority justices said.

Cue the histrionics from Republicans responsible for the maps.

GOP leaders wasted valuable time complaining about the timeline and the lack of a full opinion from the state Supreme Court, defying an order to turn over mapping data, and authoring a legal challenge that was rejected out-of-hand by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr., one of the High Court’s most conservative members.

On Wednesday lawmakers got the full opinion from the state court they’ve been asking for, and it isn’t pretty.

Justice Debra McCloskey Todd, writing for the majority, called the GOP-controlled 2011 redistricting process an “extensive, sophisticated and partisan dilution of votes ...”

“This is the antithesis of a healthy representative democracy,” Todd’s opinion reads, in part.

On Thursday Republicans were still playing games.

Some rank-and-file members were circulating a petition to impeach the state court’s majority members. And late Wednesday the office of Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, told the Harrisburg Patriot-News that leaders would attempt to throw a map together by Friday because “it’s better for us if we draw a map than if we don’t.”

Finally some straight talk on this issue. It’s been apparent for some time that, when it comes to redistricting, lawmakers care more about their own interests than voters’.

Despite their reprehensible conduct throughout this process, we still believe the legislature should be given every opportunity to make good on their constitutional responsibility.

One solution is to give lawmakers and Gov. Tom Wolf more time to come up with new voting districts.

In their original order the state court told lawmakers they had until today to draw and approve a new voting map, which would have to be approved by Gov. Wolf and sent to the court by Feb. 15.

It’s not unreasonable to give Republicans another week to construct a voting map that lives up to the state constitution’s guarantee of “free and equal” elections.

But at this point, any extension of the court’s timeline should be accompanied by a pledge from GOP lawmakers to stop the shenanigans and dedicate their full attention and effort to drawing constitutional voting districts.

That means no more lawsuits, no more impeachment petitions; no more wasting time.

Do your job.

That’s what Pennsylvania voters deserve. Not the political and legal sideshow Republicans have put on in recent weeks.