From coast to coast and in between, staunchly Republican and staunchly Democratic states are weighing redrawing their congressional district boundaries, often in explicit ways to reach a clearly partisan outcome.

We understand the impulse for engaged voters who feel strongly about the state of Pennsylvania and the nation to join in the back-and-forth over which party is responsible for the escalations in gerrymandering. We respect concerns that if the politicians engaged voters support surrender these fights and the politicans they oppose don’t, voters will our state and country slide in the wrong direction.

We still believe it’s more productive to remind voters why gerrymandering is a problem in the first place.

Allowing the parties to sort voters into contorted districts where either party has a significant advantage will reward and encourage districts where the path to reelection is to deliver — or try to deliver — for the most passionate and, all too frequently, least compromising voters.

We will leave it to each person to decide if our federal government or state government — or both — have reached a point where legislators are starting conversations about budgets and shutdowns with each side too far apart for effective governing. We can only note that neither the state or federal government has a budget today.

We also note that an electorate that caters to the places where ideological leanings are least challenged — on either side or even on both sides at the same time — hollows out the middle from the body of Americans, of their constituents, who feel our U.S. House of Representatives truly represents them.

We believe the brinkmanship of seeking partisan advantages in congressional districting leaves too many Americans — and especially the Americans most open to the compromises that a functional democratic republic requires — increasingly taxed without representation.