New York State Redistricting Plan Released

NEW YORK—The state legislative committee charged with creating a redistricting plan released its new district lines Thursday. Nine public comment sessions start at 10:30 a.m. on Monday in Albany, and the plan will pass through the Legislature before Gov. Andrew Cuomo approves or vetoes it.

Critics accuse the task force of gerrymandering, dividing the state into election districts that will give Republicans a majority in many Senate districts, leaving the voting strength of the Democrats in fewer districts.

The task force is dominated by Senate Republicans and Assembly Democrats. Each House essentially takes care of its own redistricting. The Senate Republicans created a 63rd Senate district in the Capital Region—a Republican-voter majority district that divides the currently Democrat-dominated district.

A Senate press release explains the new district as necessary because the population rate in the region has grown more than anywhere else in the state since the 2000 census.

Bill Mahoney of New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) decried the lines as “clearly the most gerrymandered lines in recent New York history.” The League of Women Voters could not comment as of press deadline without further reviewing the plan, but a spokesperson maintained the lines “should be drawn by an independent commission.”

Mahoney used the ideal population as a measure of fairness. The ideal population refers to the number of voters that should be in each district for all districts to have an equal number of voters. By state law, each district cannot be below or above the ideal population by more than 5 percent.

The Republicans have stretched the variance to the maximum point to benefit their incumbency, says Mahoney. He says Democrats also gerrymandered, but not as blatantly as the Republicans. He thinks 5 percent is too much leeway as it is, and the law should be changed.

Upstate has a lower population density and is more Republican. Downstate has a higher population density and is traditionally Democrat. The Senate has packed as many voters into downstate Senate districts as it can, says Mahoney, resulting in less representation for Democrat voters in Senate elections.

The Democratic Assembly members have done the same to a lesser degree with Assembly redistricting, says Mahoney, giving upstate less representation.

“Deviation from the ideal population is one of the few completely objective criteria that can be used [to determine how representative voter districts are],” wrote Mahoney in an email.

He compared how close past district populations have been to the ideal with how close the newly proposed redistricting would be to the ideal:

Democratic Sen. Michael Gianaris of Queens told the Utica Observer-Dispatch before the plan was released, “We expect their [Republicans’] draft will be abusively gerrymandered and the strongest argument of why we need fairness and independence in redistricting will be their own plan.”
Republican Sen. Michael Nozzolio who co-chairs the task force responded, “The constitution decides this issue … (and) the constitution is an inconvenient truth for many.” He maintains the plan is based on voter populations, not politics.

“We have drawn districts that have less disparity than is required by law and closer to equality than the current lines,” stated an Assembly press release.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has promised he will veto a redistricting plan he feels was shaped by partisan politics.

Representation for ‘communities of interest’

A Senate press release states that the plan unites “communities of interest” as mandated in federal and state legislation. The Orthodox Jewish community is consolidated into one district in Brooklyn, previously divided among five districts.

This move received mixed reviews from the Jewish community.

Some think having a majority representation for Orthodox Jews in one district is beneficial, some think it is better to keep a little representation in several districts, according to The Algemeiner, a Jewish-American newspaper.

The first Asian-American majority district was also created in Flushing, Queens, through a similar consolidation.