Earlier this month Cranberry Township supervisors took a stand, voting to formally urge state officials to do what anyone with an ounce of common sense already knows must happen:

Pennsylvania must reform its redistricting process with an eye on eliminating partisan maneuvering. In other words, it must remove state legislators from the equation and form a citizens’ commission to spearhead the remapping of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts every decade.

Elected officials and residents in Cranberry Township are coming to understand the repercussions of a broken redistricting system more clearly than most Pennsylvanians.

When the state Supreme Court imposed new, court-drawn congressional districts the municipality was split between Districts 16 and 17. Four of the township’s nine voting precincts were split as well — and as supervisors chairman Dick Hadley pointed out earlier this month, even some streets were bisected by the new district boundaries.

It’s true that the voting map state legislators drew in 2011 was a partisan gerrymander of epic proportions. But it’s difficult to see how the court-drawn map is a better alternative for the residents of Cranberry Township. A map that splits voting precincts, neighborhoods and even different sides of the same street between multiple congressional districts is not in the spirit of the Pennsylvania Constitution’s guarantee of “free and equal” elections in which voters can participate in a meaningful way.

No one appears to care less about protecting the interests of township voters than Cranberry’s own state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-12th, who earlier this month spearheaded the gutting of a bill that would have given Pennsylvania the citizen’s redistricting commission it desperately needs.

Metcalfe, who chairs the House State Government Committee and routinely brags about holding up legislation based on nothing but partisan gamesmanship, authored an amendment to House Bill 722 — a constitutional amendment with bipartisan support — that removed all mention of the 11-person voters commission the bill originally proposed.

In its place Metcalfe envisions a six-member panel of state legislators which is ultimately controlled by the majority party.

In other words, the chairman is working desperately to protect the status quo in Harrisburg and ensure that legislators with a proven propensity for unconstitutional gerrymandering have even less oversight than they currently do.

That doesn’t serve Cranberry Township voters any better than a last-minute, court-drawn congressional map that splits communities between different voting districts.