With legislators having failed to produce a fair and legal congressional district map for Pennsylvania, the job of ensuring everything is ready for the state’s May primary election now falls to the state Supreme Court.

We didn’t want things to be this way — in fact last week we said the court should consider giving Republicans in the state legislature more time to work, if it appeared that a good faith effort was in the works.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case. And on Monday afternoon the court published its own congressional voting map.

They had plenty of help. As of Friday there were no less than seven proposals floating around for how the state’s new Congressional map should look. Two were submitted by the groups that sued to have the old map thrown out; one by GOP leaders in the House and Senate; one by Gov. Tom Wolf; another by Lt. Gov. Mike Stack; one by the House Democratic caucus; and one by the Senate Democratic caucus.

If you’re unhappy with the composition of the new map — and with Butler County fractured into three Congressional districts, we’re not thrilled — look no further than our legislators.

Republican leaders refused to allow legislators to debate the issue and tried to circumvent the state constitution’s proscribed process for redistricting by unilaterally submitting their own map to Gov. Tom Wolf, who predictably rejected it as another GOP-devised gerrymander.

One Republican legislator, Rep. Chris Dush, continues to seek support for impeachment proceedings against the court’s five Democratic justices. And GOP leaders have said they intend to ask federal judges to block any new map the court generates.

In other words, our elected leaders were faced with a real problem — and a chance to better-serve voters during the 2018 mid-term elections — and responded by creating a political and legal circus.

All of this is more fuel for the argument that redistricting should be taken out of politicians’ hands entirely. We agree: they’re simply not up to the task.

In the short term that means that the state Supreme Court must follow through on its pledge to create a voting map, which it do on Monday.

This is not an ideal circumstance by any stretch of the imagination. But if it is a constitutional crisis, as Republicans claim, it is one they willfully invited.

In the long term, the right way forward is to abolish the process by which redistricting is politicized, and form an independent commission to draw the state’s voting maps.

There are many forms such a commission could take — from an effort formed entirely of private citizens to one directed by academics and supercomputers.

If that sounds like a drastic step, remember that Pennsylvania’s current state-level voting districts were, in essence, created by a private citizen because lawmakers were unable to fulfill their duties.

The last time state legislators were tasked with drawing voting districts, after the 2010 census, it was a woman named Amanda Holt — a then-29-year-old, home schooled piano teacher from Allentown, Pa. — who drew the districts which provided the blueprint for what is now Pennsylvania’s state level — or legislative — voting map.

Holt is now 35 and a Lehigh County commissioner who still has thoughts about what fair voting districts look like. She’s drawn her own version of congressional voting maps and put it online for people to review — proving that there is at least one Republican in Pennsylvania willing to rise above partisan and political gamesmanship and work for what’s in the best interests of voters.

In case lawmakers need a reminder, those interests are a fair and orderly redistricting process, maps that allow voters to cast meaningful ballots, and a General Assembly that is more interested in governing than bickering.