Posts Tagged ‘Newsday’
The congressional map proposed by U.S. Magistrate Roanne Mann made a mockery of the idea that drawing fair electoral districts is hard, or that the state needs 10 years and a constitutional amendment to do it. Mann’s map presents sensible boundaries that respect communities, rather than incumbents and parties — more than you can say for the maps proposed by the State Senate and Assembly.
New lines are drawn every 10 years, and New York’s loss of two seats this time promised to make the process sticky. Mann, called in by a panel of federal appeals court judges after the Senate and Assembly said they could not agree on lines, drew a map that dealt with that, and all the other challenges, neatly.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/editorial-court-s-maps-for-congress-fairer-1.3583731
A federal magistrate Tuesday issued a draft of new congressional districts that would dramatically impact the Long Island delegation.
The maps drawn by U.S. Magistrate Roanne Mann would become effective only if the State Senate and Assembly fail to act quickly to compromise on a congressional redistricting plan and pass it into law. Officials said they still expect state lawmakers to take action rather than allow the courts to take over the process. New York must shrink its delegation from 29 to 27.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/judge-releases-redistricting-maps-1.3582286
For the fourth decade in a row, the creation of New York’s congressional districts has landed in the federal courts. This time it might stay there, and that can only be for the good.
Unlike the three previous redistrictings, in which legislators compromised on their own maps at the last possible moment and forestalled implementation of the courts’ drawings, there appears to be little chance to untangle this year’s outlandish partisanship. The federal courts stepped into the process after it was clear the State Legislature’s task force, charged with drawing congressional districts based on the 2010 Census, could not produce maps both the Republican-led Senate and Democratic-led Assembly could agree on.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/editorial-stand-firm-for-fair-districts-1.3571554
Todd Breitbart directed the staff work on redistricting for State Senate Democrats from 1980 through 2005. He is one of the plaintiffs in Cohen v. LATFOR, which challenges the creation of a 63rd Senate seat.
Several observers of the once-in-a-decade redistricting of the State Senate and Assembly, including former Attorney General Robert Abrams and the nonpartisan good-government group Citizens Union, called on the governor yesterday to compromise on the new lines in exchange for a state constitutional amendment taking this process out of the hands of the legislature — for the next round, in 2022.
Five years ago, I helped the New York City Bar Association craft just such an amendment. But an amendment should not be linked to the redistricting bill that may come to a vote as early as next week.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/breitbart-don-t-make-bad-deal-for-bad-maps-1.3565157
James A. Gardner is vice dean for academic affairs and a professor of civil justice at SUNY Buffalo Law School.
‘No man,” wrote James Madison, the father of our Constitution, “is allowed to be a judge in his own cause.”
That very sensible prohibition on self-dealing is reliably violated during the once-a-decade spectacle of redistricting, when elected officials get the chance to draw their own districts.
Self-dealing of any kind is bad enough, but the scale on which it has been practiced by the New York State Legislature is in a class by itself. For all but two of the last 40 or so years, a corrupt deal between the major parties has kept the Senate in Republican hands and the Assembly under Democratic control — in a state where registrations run Democratic by nearly 2 to 1.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/gardner-gov-cuomo-should-veto-the-maps-1.3555481
A federal judge in Brooklyn had the right take on the chaotic and partisan process of redrawing New York’s election districts. The courts will have to intervene eventually — as they did in 1992 and 2002 — so why wait?
A congressional primary is scheduled for June 26. Petition gathering begins next month, on March 20. But the legislature hasn’t released, much less approved, lines for the state’s 27 districts, down from 29 thanks to lost population.
Late yesterday, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals agreeded with U.S. District Court Judge Dora Irizarry and appointed a three-judge panel to determine whether a special master is needed to draw timely maps in compliance with state and federal law.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/courts-might-draw-fairer-electoral-maps-1.3530167
A proposed new map for the 18th Assembly District in Nassau County looks like a muscle-bound lug, back turned, sprinting away before someone can catch sight of him. It’s an optical illusion, but one that’s apt. Because a partisan redistricting committee in Albany is trying to do the same thing.
The committee has slapped down a series of laughable lines, in newly redrawn proposed state Assembly and Senate districts for Long Island. And the committee is almost certain to run away with it.
In the Long Island of their view, the North Fork should be split and the Massapequas ought to lose that last “s.” The little village of Lynbrook needs to be divided and the budding political prowess of Brentwood, Central Islip and Bay Shore must be slapped back.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/columnists/joye-brown/albany-redistricting-plan-s-laughable-lines-1.3522842
When electoral boundaries are drawn, one of the bedrock rules is to bind together “communities of interest.” Yet it’s inevitable that these groups will conflict, and impassioned pleas over which ones to keep intact will follow. Such was the case yesterday at Long Island’s hearing on the proposed State Senate and Assembly maps.
But looking at the maps released by a legislative committee and listening to the legislators who drew them behind closed doors in Albany, it’s obvious only one community of interest really matters: the tight circle of those who hold power and work tirelessly to keep it.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/editorial-long-islanders-have-their-say-1.3518147
Picture an anxious round of musical chairs — with the tune still playing.
With proposed 10-year congressional maps due to be completed within two weeks, speculation over how they will look is reaching fever pitch among those with the most at stake: House incumbents.
And with New York due to lose two of its 29 congressional seats this year, one of the older what-ifs made it back into circulation this week. It involves the prospect that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) would end up forced into the same district as Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Roslyn Heights).
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/columnists/dan-janison/anxiousness-grows-over-house-redistricting-1.3518521
Ana María Archila is the co-executive director of Make the Road New York, the largest participatory immigrant organization in New York, which has offices in Suffolk County, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.
How much does your vote count?
“As much as anyone else’s,” you might think. But it’s not so simple. The voting power of individuals and communities all hinges on geography.
Every 10 years, America’s political landscape changes. Following the census, levels of government draw new district lines to reflect changing demography. Among other factors, the law says newly drawn districts should reflect population changes while remaining compact and keeping intact “communities of interest” — that is, groups living near one another with commonalities such as racial and ethnic background or economic interests.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/archila-electoral-maps-cheat-minorities-1.3493877
The current redistricting of New York State Senate and Assembly seats is a politicized mess, but the redrawing of new electoral maps for the U.S. House of Representatives seems to be far worse. If Albany legislative leaders don’t release those maps soon, it might be impossible to hold congressional primaries on time.
From drawing 27 congressional seats all the way down to setting up districts for counties like Nassau and towns like Hempstead and Brookhaven, the redistricting required by law following the 2010 Census is dissolving — or is at risk of dissolving — into a series of gerrymandered disasters. The refusal of Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) to let a nonpartisan commission draw the new maps has put the state in a precarious situation. Not only are they disenfranchising voters, they won’t allow the election system to operate properly.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/politics-taints-new-york-redistricting-1.3493963
The new state district lines drawn by the majorities of the state legislature will undergo changes before lawmakers vote on a final plan, the co-chairs of a task force drawing the lines said Monday.
“We look forward to having citizen input so we can make appropriate changes focusing on ‘communities of interest,’ ” Sen. Michael F. Nozzolio (R-Fayette) told reporters before the first of nine hearings on the proposed lines, released last week.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/state-district-lines-not-yet-final-1.3491241
The statewide redistricting maps for New York’s Senate and Assembly seats were released Thursday, and evaluating these complicated political subdivisions will take time. It is clear, though, that they were created via the same partisan system that has given us gerrymandering so many times before, by leaders who pledged they’d never do that to voters again.
And, at first glance, they’ve done it to voters again.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/gerrymandered-districts-live-on-in-new-york-state-1.3482350
As Senate Republicans prepare to unveil new election-district maps, analysts are saying that the additional district the GOP has talked about will be designed in the Albany area – for current Assmb. George Amedore (R-Schenectady).
Amedore, a successful home builder, has represented a Schenectady and Montgomery counties district since 2007. A new district that includes him probably would have to run south of Albany to avoid any conflicts with Sen. Hugh Farley (R-Schenectady), who has been in office since 1977, said several lobbyists whose firms work on redistricting issues.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/news/breaking/spin-cycle-1.812042/63rd-seat-to-be-schenectady-based-1.3473287
Angry that state Senate Republicans acted quietly and unilaterally to add a seat in the chamber, a Democratic member of the state task force charged with drawing new political lines called its process “a farce and a waste of time and money.”
Sen. Martin Malave Dilan, D-Brooklyn, asked from the start of the New York State Legislature’s Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment public hearings in July how many Senate districts would be created. He got no answer, and many good-government groups — including Common Cause, which submitted its own complete set of district lines — assumed the Senate would remain at 62 members.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york-redistricting-called-farce-1.3451367
You don’t need to look to Albany for intense, litigious battles over legislative redistricting. In Nassau, a partisan, racially charged fight in the legislature and the courts over district line-drawing has preoccupied the county for months.
For local governments, the decennial redrawing of district lines must meet the same national constitutional and statutory standards as the state’s, and the process awakens the same core problem that makes redistricting a massive and recurring issue in Albany. Elected officials put their personal or partisan interests ahead of fairness, competitiveness and accountability to the electorate — that is, ahead of the public interest.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/crreo-new-models-for-local-districts-1.3448547
BY GLENN D. MAGPANTAY
Glenn D. Magpantay is director of the Democracy Program at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
There are 1.4 million Asian-Americans who now live in New York. In New York City alone, our community grew 32 percent over the past decade, to over 1 million people. Half a million Asian-Americans live in Queens, where the Asian-American population grew 300 times faster than the rest of the population.
So if you’re new to New York’s redistricting process, you may be surprised to learn that only one state Assembly district in New York has a majority of Asian-American voters — and not a single State Senate district has an Asian-American majority.
Read More: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/magpantay-wanted-equal-political-access-1.3434145
