More than two years ago — on June 30, 2016, to be precise — we used this page to bemoan the length of time Butler County Common Pleas Court Judge Marilyn Horan was being forced to wait after being nominated for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Today Horan — who was nominated for a seat on the federal bench in 2015 by President Barack Obama, and again in 2017 by President Donald Trump — is still waiting.

On Thursday Horan’s name, along with that U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Baxter of Erie and 10 other U.S. district court nominees, were presented to the U.S. Senate for final confirmation. In an encouraging sign, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture on all of the nominations — indicating that he’s ready to proceed to confirmation votes for these positions.

But of course, that’s not the end of the matter. If only things were so simple.

In 2016 it was Republicans in the chamber who played obstructionist politics and, ultimately, derailed the nominations of Horan and Baxter. This time around it could be Democrats, who political observers note could force the chamber to take arduous roll call votes on each nominee — a process that can include up to 30 hours of debate per name.

Pulling such a stunt would be as shameful as the Senate’s performance was in 2016, when it managed to confirm just 17 judicial nominees, the fewest since 1960 — a disgrace that left 30 federal jurisdictions in “judicial emergency” status, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Virtually nothing has changed. As of Monday, 126 seats on federal district courts remained vacant — including five seats on the federal bench serving Western Pennsylvania, two of which have been empty since 2013.

This is an unacceptable state-of-affairs for a federal district court system in which more than 3,200 civil and criminal cases are filed each year. The region is authorized for 10 federal judgeships and has only five full-time judges.

Three seats are currently occupied by senior judges (a form of semi-retirement in which a judge’s caseload is reduced) and two — the seats that would be filled by Horan and Baxter — are sitting empty.

Two years ago we urged members of the Senate to end their nonsensical inaction, confirm these nominees and give the country’s court system the tools necessary to do its job properly.

That remains our plea. These judgeships are not political statements — they are not even generally controversial in any way. Both Baxter and Horan have been endorsed by Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, and Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat.

The time for delay and political gamesmanship is long past. Send Judge Horan to Pittsburgh, where her services are desperately needed.