The new U.S. House map chosen Wednesday by the state’s highest court keeps Butler County in one congressional district, something for which county officials have advocated.

The state Supreme Court-selected map, which divides Pennsylvania into 17 congressional districts and was proposed by a group of Democratic voters, keeps all of Butler within the 16th District, a seat currently occupied by Republican Rep. Mike Kelly.

The group of voters sued in 2021 in an attempt to have the state’s high court, rather than the legislature, draw the new districts ahead of the 2022 elections.

All three Butler County commissioners have lobbied the state legislature since it was tasked with redrawing the political map to keep Butler County within one district. At minimum, Commissioners Chairwoman Leslie Osche said, they didn’t want to see a map with district boundaries splitting individual communities.

“I am certainly pleased to see that Butler County, specifically, remains whole, and we don't have any municipal (splits), which were present in the original map,” Osche said. “So, I think, for Butler County it's a good thing.”

Commissioner Kevin Boozel echoed Osche’s remarks.

“All of Butler County is included in one district, and that is a great thing,” he said.

The state high court adopted the map after the Republican-controlled state legislature approved its own map, which was later vetoed by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat. The court also adopted new maps in 2018, when a group of voters successfully challenged the then-existing map as unlawfully gerrymandered to benefit Republican candidates.

Under the districts adopted by the state’s high court in 2018, Butler County was split into three districts. Most of the county’s western side was represented by Kelly, while Rep. Glenn “G. T.” Thompson, R-15th, represented much of eastern Butler County. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-17th, represented two precincts in Cranberry Township.

Since then, commissioners have sought to reunite the county in a single U.S. House of Representatives district.

“That looks to be the case there,” Osche said. “Unfortunately, the divisions in the state House and (state) Senate maps are interesting. The state House map redrawing, that 8th District, is very bizarre.”

The map adopted Wednesday includes splits within other counties, such as neighboring Allegheny and Venango counties and in several eastern Pensylvania counties.

“As far as what it looks like for the rest of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I am not going to comment on the political leanings of that map because that's not my area of expertise,” Osche said.

Wolf said in a statement Wednesday the court-adopted map is “fair.” Wolf submitted his own plan to the court for consideration after vetoing the map approved by the legislature, although his proposal was ultimately not adopted.

“I am pleased with today’s ruling adopting the so-called 'Carter Plan' for congressional redistricting. It is a fair map that will result in a congressional delegation mirroring the citizenry of Pennsylvania,” Wolf’s statement reads. “With today’s decision, we could again send to Washington members of Congress elected in districts that are fairly drawn without favor to one party or the other.”

Pennsylvania’s former, 18-district map, according to political news site FiveThirtyEight, contained nine districts that favored Republican candidates, six which favored Democratic candidates and three “highly-competitive” seats. The new, 17-district map, the website reports, does away with one Republican-leaning district, leaving eight Republican-leaning seats, six Democratic-leaning districts and three competitive seats.

A district “favoring” one party is one in which candidates of that party typically win by a margin of 5% or more; a competitive district is one in which the margin is typically smaller than 5%.

With fewer districts, the new map pushes two incumbents into the same district, with Thompson and U.S. Rep. Fred Keller, R-12th, in the 15th District. Keller said Wednesday he wouldn’t challenge Thompson, instead running in the 9th District, currently occupied by Republican Rep. Dan Meuser, the Associated Press reported.

The state Supreme Court’s map will likely be in place for the 2022 midterm elections, although a group of Republican congressional candidates and voters filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to prevent the state court from adopting a map and changing deadlines for the upcoming primary elections.

Also on Wednesday, the state Supreme Court partially changed the deadlines in place for the primary elections, which are slated for May 17.

Without changing the date of the election itself, the court pushed back the dates by which candidates must submit their nominating petitions, altering the deadline by roughly a week. The last day for candidates to circulate and file their petitions is March 15, with objections due by March 22.

Commissioners in both January and February expressed anxiety over whether the court’s selection of a new map would impair the county’s ability to run the May primary.

Boozel said regardless of the new deadlines, the new map being selected in late February has already caused some challenges.

“I think, no matter what happened, we already have extra stressors on our election staff,” Boozel said. “My biggest concern is that we have to make sure that we're doing everything we can to alleviate that stress: Not just for the election staff, but for the public and for the people who are running as candidates. They're not getting clear direction on how to move forward when we don’t know dates, and that's been very troubling for them; I know it has."

Osche said the minor changes to the deadlines, without changing the date of the election itself, should not create many new issues with the county’s administration of the election.

“What I don't want to see is a delay in being able to approve a final ballot,” Osche said. “With the mail-in ballot process, that's where we get up against it, and we saw that in 2020, where ballot challenges happened and we didn't get a final, approved ballot until late in September, which left maybe five weeks, if that, to get all of the ballots mailed.”